Spatially Common Sparsity Based Adaptive Channel Estimation and Feedback for FDD Massive MIMO

This paper proposes a spatially common sparsity based adaptive channel estimation and feedback scheme for frequency division duplex based massive multi-input multi-output (MIMO) systems, which adapts training overhead and pilot design to reliably estimate and feed back the downlink channel state information (CSI) with significantly reduced overhead. Specifically, a nonorthogonal downlink pilot design is first proposed, which is very different from standard orthogonal pilots. By exploiting the spatially common sparsity of massive MIMO channels, a compressive sensing (CS) based adaptive CSI acquisition scheme is proposed, where the consumed time slot overhead only adaptively depends on the sparsity level of the channels. In addition, a distributed sparsity adaptive matching pursuit algorithm is proposed to jointly estimate the channels of multiple subcarriers. Furthermore, by exploiting the temporal channel correlation, a closed-loop channel tracking scheme is provided, which adaptively designs the nonorthogonal pilot according to the previous channel estimation to achieve an enhanced CSI acquisition. Finally, we generalize the results of the multiple-measurement-vectors case in CS and derive the Cramér-Rao lower bound of the proposed scheme, which enlightens us to design the nonorthogonal pilot signals for the improved performance. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme outperforms its counterparts, and it is capable of approaching the performance bound.