Low-Complexity Channel Estimation for Intelligent Reflecting Surface-Enhanced Massive MIMO

Abstract

Intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) consisting of massive passive elements is a promising technology to save the hardware cost and energy consumption, but with a challenging channel estimation of IRS transmission links. In this letter, a low-complexity channel estimation method is first proposed for IRS-enhanced multi-user massive multiple-input and multiple-output systems, which can attain the separate channel state information (CSI) of the cascaded link. The acquisition of the separate CSI contributes to the flexibility of channel estimations for the multi-user case with user mobility. The proposed channel estimation consists of direction-of-arrival and path gain estimations, which are implemented by using the limited radio frequency chains and pilots, respectively. Besides, the computational complexity is analyzed for the proposed and existing methods for comparison. Numerical results show that the proposed method can achieve accurate channel estimation with a low complexity.