Performance Analysis of 1-Bit Massive MIMO with Superimposed Pilots

In this work, we consider a 1-bit quantized Massive MIMO channel with superimposed pilots (SP), dubbed “QSP”. With linear minimum mean square error (LMMSE) channel estimator and maximum ratio combining (MRC) receiver at the BS, we deive an approximate lower bound on the ergodic achievable rate. When optimizing pilot and data powers, the optimal power allocation maximizing the data rate is obtained in a closed-form solution. We demonstrate that quantization noise is not critical and the data rate converges to a deterministic value as the number of BS antennas grows without limit. When considering a 1-bit quantized Massive MIMO channel with multiplexed-pilots (QTP), it is shown that QSP can outperform the non-optimized QTP in many cases. Moreover, we demonstrate that the gap between QSP, with and without pilot removal after estimating the channel, is not significant. Numerical results are presented to verify our analytical findings and insights are provided for further research on SP.