Pilot Contamination Elimination in Massive MIMO Systems with an Improved Time-Shifted Scheme

Abstract

Pilot contamination can bring up a grave impairment in the performance of massive multiple-input multiple-output(MIMO) systems. In this paper, an improved time-shifted pilot scheme is proposed to reduce the pilot contamination, where orthogonal pilots are employed in the same group to eliminate the residual intra-group interference existing in the original time-shifted pilot scheme. Meanwhile, the rigorous closed-form expressions of both downlink and uplink transmission rates with a finite number of antennas are derived, and it is shown that the intra-group interference can be completely eliminated by the proposed scheme. Simulation results demonstrate that both downlink and uplink transmission rates are significantly improved by employing the proposed scheme.

Keywords

massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) / pilot contamination / time-shifted pilot