Joint distance-based user grouping and pilot assignment schemes for pilot decontamination in massive MIMO systems

摘要

Pilot contamination (PC) is one of the most crucial problems in massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems, due to a limited source of the coherence block. In the current study, two pilot assignment schemes proposed for massive MIMO uplink transmission. We divided each cell into two groups of edge and center users under distance-based user grouping algorithm (DUG), which the aim is finding the best user grouping boundary. The best boundary is where both signal to interference plus noise Ratio (SINR) of edge and center users is maximum, according to the user's distance to base stations (BS). We investigated the location-aware pilot assignment (LPA) scheme to enhance the quality of services for both groups. In LPA by assuming three pilot groups for adjacent cells and determining the user's distance to BS, the planned pilots assigned to the users according to their distance to the BS. Then, we optimized pilot schedules in each group by maximizing uplink (UL) rate of each user with auction-based optimization pilot assignment (AOPA). Simulation results show that both DUG and LPA improve the rate of edge users about 70% and the rate of center users about 30%. Joint DUG and AOPA enhance the rate of the edge and center users about 100% and 80% in each group than conventional schemes and about 50% and 10%, compared with the LPA method. Simulation results show that the proposed method is efficient in reducing PC and improving spectral efficiency.