Channel Estimation and IQ Imbalance Compensation for Uplink Massive MIMO Systems With Low-Resolution ADCs

In this paper, two techniques to compensate inphase/quadrature-phase imbalance (IQI) are investigated in the uplink-quantized massive multiple-input and multiple-output systems for different models of randomized IQI parameters. One is referred to as combined-signal-based channel estimation and compensation (CCEC) and the other is denoted by effective channel estimation and compensation (ECEC). First, an independent automatic gain control (AGC) scheme is proposed to calibrate the dynamic range of both the I branch and the Q branch. By doing that, different quantization steps are used for analog-to-digital converters following the AGCs in these two branches at each receive antenna. Second, considering the impacts of both quantization and IQI, we give the details of channel estimation and IQI compensation for both the CCEC and the ECEC using bilinear generalized approximate message passing (Bi-GAMP). Moreover, to exploit the Bi-GAMP for ECEC reasonably, we theoretically derive the probability density function (pdf) of the elements in the effective channel for the case where only RX IQI is considered. Furthermore, we extend the ECEC to the case where both RX IQI and TX IQI are incorporated into the systems and derive the similar pdf as well. Finally, we use the numerical results to testify the validity of our theoretical analysis and the fact that the analytic PDF can be approximated by a Gaussian distribution when the IQI parameters are relatively small. Compared with other classical methods, the proposed methods can obtain better performance based on the Monte Carlo simulation results.