Machine Learning-Based Channel Prediction in Massive MIMO With Channel Aging

Abstract

To support the ever increasing number of devices in massive multiple-input multiple-output (mMIMO) systems, an excessive amount of overhead is required for conventional orthogonal pilot-based channel estimation schemes. To circumvent this fundamental constraint, we design a machine learning (ML)-based time-division duplex scheme in which channel state information (CSI) can be obtained by leveraging the temporal channel correlation. The presence of the temporal channel correlation is due to the stationarity of the propagation environment across time. The proposed ML-based predictors involve a pattern extraction implemented via a convolutional neural network, and a CSI predictor realized by an autoregressive (AR) predictor or an autoregressive network with exogenous inputs recurrent neural network. Closed-form expressions for the user uplink and downlink achievable spectral efficiency and average per-user throughput are provided for the ML-based time division duplex schemes. Our numerical results demonstrate that the proposed ML-based predictors can remarkably improve the prediction quality for both low and high mobility scenarios, and offer great performance gains on the per-user achievable throughput.