2 January 2019

Wideband MIMO Channel Estimation for Hybrid Beamforming Millimeter Wave Systems via Random Spatial Sampling

Vlachos, E., Alexandropoulos, G., Thompson, J. S.
IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Signal Processing

Abstract

Millimeter Wave (mmWave) massive Multiple In- put Multiple Output (MIMO) systems realizing directive com- munication over large bandwidths via Hybrid analog and digital BeamForming (HBF) require reliable estimation of the wideband wireless channel. However, the hardware limitations with HBF architectures in conjunction with the short coherence time inherit in mmWave communication render this estimation a challenging task. In this paper, we develop a novel wideband channel estima- tion framework for mmWave massive MIMO systems with HBF reception. The proposed framework jointly exploits the low rank property and the available angular information to provide more accurate channel recovery, especially for short beam training in- tervals. We introduce a novel analog combining architecture that includes a random spatial sampling structure placed before the input of the analog received signals to the digital component of the HBF receiver . This architecture supports the proposed matrix- completion-based estimation approach in providing the sampling set of measurements for recovering the unknown channel matrix.

Type 2
Publication IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Signal Processing
Date January 2019

Key Contributions

  • Development of a novel wideband channel estimation framework for mmWave massive MIMO systems employing hybrid beamforming, addressing the challenges of hardware limitations and short coherence time.
  • Joint exploitation of the low-rank property of the channel and available angular information to enhance channel recovery accuracy, particularly in short beam training scenarios.
  • Formulation of the estimation problem as a convex optimization task, leading to a computationally efficient solution via singular value thresholding and leveraging the inherent structure of the mmWave channel.