Distributed Massive MIMO Channel Estimation and Channel Database Assistance

Due to the low per-antenna SNR and high signaling overhead, channel estimation is a major bottleneck in Massive MIMO systems. Spatial constraints can improve estimation performance by exploiting sparsity. Solutions exist for far field beam domain channel estimation based on angle of arrival estimation. However, there is no equivalent solution for near field and distributed MIMO spatial channel estimation. We present a solutionsource domain channel estimationthat is based on source location estimation. We extend this to employ a ‘Channel Database’ incorporating information about the physical scattering environment into channel estimation. We present methods for generation, storage and usage of the Channel Database to assist localization and communication. Keywords—Massive MIMO, Spatial Channel Estimation, Channel Database, Location Assisted communication