Uplink channel estimation error for large scale MIMO system

The high demand on the wireless networks and the need for higher data rates are the motivation to develop new technologies. Recently, the idea of using large-scale MIMO systems has grabbed great attention from the researchers due to its high spectral and energy efficiency. In this paper, we analyze the UL channel estimation error using large number of antennas in the base station where the UL channel is based on predefined pilot signal. By making a comparison between the identified UL pilot signal and the received UL signal we can get the realization of the channel. We choose to deal with one cell scenario where the effect of inter-cell interference is eliminated for the sake of studying simple approach. While the number of antennas is very large in the base station side, we choose to have one antennal in the user terminal side. We choose to have two models to generate the channel covariance matrix includes one-ring model and exponential correlation model. Figures of channel estimation error are generated where the performance of the mean square error MSE per antenna is presented as a function signal to noise ratio SNR. The simulation results show that the higher the SNR the better the performance. Furthermore, the affect of the pilot length on the channel estimation error is studied where two different covariance models are used to see the impact of the two cases. In the two cases, the increase of the pilot length has improved the estimation accuracy.