Minimum Error Entropy Criterion Based Channel Estimation for Massive-MIMO in VLC

Visible light communication (VLC) has emerged as a promising supplement to existing radio frequency-based communication systems. Recently, the use of massive light emitting diodes (LED) and photodetector (PD) arrays have been proposed to increase the capacity of the overall VLC link. At the receiver, the signals received by the PD arrays are combined to enhance the achievable data rates. However, successful combining and subsequent detection depends on accurate channel estimation. In this paper, we consider a typical massive multiple input multiple output VLC scenario with maximal ratio combining, and derive an asymptotic analytical expression for the probability density function (p.d.f) of the residual additive distortion for mobile users. Since the minimum error entropy (MEE)-based learning paradigm outperforms the traditional Bussgang approaches due to the incorporation of order statistics, we derive an MEE-based channel estimator using the analytical expression for the p.d.f of the additive distortion. Simulations are carried out for various LED array-sizes, and under various LED transmit half angles. Furthermore, using the analytically derived p.d.f, the proposed MEE-criterion-based channel estimator achieves lower bit error rate, and faster convergence, as compared to existing minimum mean square error based channel estimator.