Pilot Allocation and Sum-rate Analysis in Distributed Massive MIMO Systems

In distributed massive multi-input multi-output (DM-MIMO) systems, orthogonal pilot sequences are generally utilized to acquire the channel state information (CSI). However, this highly restricts the number of users simultaneously served. In this paper, a pilot reuse within a single cell DM-MIMO system is proposed to serve more users than the available pilot sequences. The reuse in this strategy is applied so that maximum achievable sum-rate is satisfied with the constraint of predefined pilot resource. On this basis, two users in different subcells separated by a large distance and satisfying a specific signal to interference plus noise ratio (SINR) level can share the same pilot sequence. An expression for SINR is derived for any pair of users who use the same pilot. Based on this expression, an algorithm is proposed to choose which pairs of users are able to use the same pilot with the constraint of satisfying the minimum SINR required for these users. The simulation results demonstrate that the uplink achievable sum-rate for the proposed strategy is higher than both cases when no pilot reuse or random pilot reuse are considered.