An Iterative Channel Estimation Method for Multi-Cell Massive MIMO Systems

For a massive multiple-input multiple-output system in the multi-cell scenarios, it generally suffers from pilot contamination due to the fact that the adjacent cells may use the same pilot sequences. In order to reduce the impact of pilot contamination on the system performance, a novel iterative channel estimation method is proposed. Specifically, in the proposed method, besides the pilot sequences, the data symbols decoded with high reliability are selected to enhance the channel estimation. Furthermore, the selection criteria are derived to determine which data symbols are reliably decoded. The simulation results show that the proposed method can effectively improve the channel estimation accuracy and the error performance of the considered systems.