New Strategy based on Large Scale Fading Coefficients to Mitigate the Pilot Contamination Problem in Massive MIMO Systems

This paper provides an algorithm that aims to address the problem of Pilot Contamination (PC) within Massive MIMO systems. The algorithm is mainly derived from the asymptotic regime, where Base Stations (BSs) are equipped with a large number of antennas. Regarding the fact that the available pilot resources are limited and many users should be assigned with pilots, the reuse of the same pilots within different cells is essential. Accordingly, the pattern where pilots are reused within different cells is considered herein. Specifically, the large scale fading coefficients (LSFs) are exploited to show that the PC upon users depends on the distance between users that employ the same pilots. Hence, instead of optimizing the manner where pilots are assigned to users, the proposed algorithm assigns pilots to users of different cells based on their LSF coefficients and through the exploitation of a simple matrix arrangement. Simulation results show that the problem of PC is widely reduced.