Downlink Resource Allocation With Pilot Length Optimization for User-Centric Cell-Free MIMO Networks

Pilot length is a crucial parameter in cell-free multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) networks, which could significantly affect the downlink throughput. In this letter, we jointly optimize the user scheduling, power allocation and pilot length for user-centric (UC) cell-free MIMO networks. We consider the frequency band is uniformly split into several sub-channels. As the number of users scheduled on one sub-channel is commonly small, orthogonal pilot sequences are adopted among users on each sub-channel to avoid pilot contamination. To achieve user fairness, we aim to maximize the minimum ergodic user rate in the downlink transmission, yielding a challenging mix-integer non-convex optimization. Inspired by the weighted
$l_{1}$
-norm approximation in compressive sensing together with successive convex approximation (SCA), an iterative scheme is then proposed to solve the problem. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme outperforms its state-of-the-art counterpart, which is a three-step algorithm including user grouping, sub-channel allocation, and power optimization.