Semi-Blind Time-Domain Channel Estimation for Frequency-Selective Multiuser Massive MIMO Systems

The availability of accurate channel state information (CSI) is essential in multiuser massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems. However, most published works focus on frequency-flat channel estimation which requires that the estimation must be repeated for every frequency slot, e.g., subcarrier, in a broadband system. Since the channels in the frequency-domain are the Fourier transform of a small set of time-domain channel coefficients, the time-domain channel estimation requires that fewer parameters be estimated. In this paper, we propose a semi-blind, time-domain, channel estimation technique for frequency-selective massive MIMO systems. Our solution depends on the subspace spanned by the signal eigenvectors of the received signal covariance matrix. Importantly, since the receiver samples at the symbol rate, time-domain-based estimation inherently has available enough samples for an accurate matrix estimate. To avoid asymptotic assumptions, we express each channel vector as a linear combination of the signal eigenvectors. We estimate the linear combination using a set of training symbols. Given the many samples of the received signal in the time-domain, we obtain a better channel estimate compared to conventional subcarrier-wise frequency-domain channel estimation. Unlike the previous published results, in this paper, we do not assume orthogonality of users’ channels or knowledge of large-scale fading coefficients. In addition, our estimation procedure does not require orthogonality between the training symbols of the users in all cells.