Downlink channel estimation in FDD cell-free massive MIMO

Abstract

In frequency-division duplexing (FDD) cell-free massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems, an excessive channel estimation overhead is a critical issue that limits the system performance. In this paper, by exploiting the sparse channel characteristics of such a cell-free system, we apply compressive sensing to estimate the channel state information and solve the excessive pilot overhead problem. The proposed algorithm estimates several channel coefficients with significant gains in the power domain and ignores the approximately zero coefficients. Compared to minimum mean square error (MMSE) estimation with orthogonal pilots, the proposed method significantly reduces the pilot overhead in an FDD cell-free massive MIMO system. The access points (APs) that contribute low gains feature reduced energy consumption because the power coefficients corresponding to zero gains in the sparse channel are assigned zeros in the power control process. Therefore, to improve the energy efficiency, the ignored channel coefficients reduce the power overhead.