Millimeter Wave Channel Estimation Based on Subspace Fitting

We consider the channel estimation of millimeter wave (mmWave) multiple-input multiple-output systems, where both the transmitter and receiver adopt hybrid beamforming structure. Due to the spatial sparsity of the mmWave channel, it can be reconstructed by estimating the direction and gain of the paths. Leveraging this feature, we propose a channel estimation algorithm based on subspace fitting to estimate the path directions, and the path gains are obtained using the least squares method. However, similar to the most existing mmWave channel estimation schemes, the proposed algorithm requires a two-dimensional search in candidate angle space, which is very complicated. In order to reduce the computational complexity, we develop a low-complexity channel estimation algorithm using the orthogonal matching pursuit (OMP) method, which significantly reduces the computational complexity. However, when the paths are strongly correlated, the channel estimation accuracy will decrease. To overcome this defect, we further develop a low-complexity method based on subspace fitting. This algorithm makes a trade-off between the computational complexity and channel estimation accuracy. Furthermore, the pilot beam pattern for different hybrid beamforming structure is designed using infinitely and quantized phase shifters to improve the signal-to-noise ratio of the pilot signals. In addition, the proposed channel estimation methods can also be used in the multi-user scenario. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed subspace fitting method outperforms the existing methods when the angular resolution is the same. Meanwhile, the low-complexity OMP and subspace fitting methods have a good performance in single path scenario when compared to subspace fitting method, even if the computation complexity is lower. Moreover, the performance of the low-complexity subspace fitting method is close to the subspace fitting method.