2015 IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC): - Track 3: Mobile and Wireless Networks
Pilot Sequences Allocation in TDD Massive MIMO
Systems
Xiangyu Yan, Huarui Yin, Mengbing Xia, Guo Wei
Department of Electronic Engineering and Information Science
University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China
Email:yanxyu@mail.ustc.edu.cn yhr@ustc.edu.cn xmb@mail.ustc.edu.cn wei@ustc.edu.cn
AbstractMassive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) has
been proposed as a key technology for the future fth generation
(5G) cellular networks. In time division duplex (TDD) massive
MIMO systems, pilot contamination caused by channel estima-
tion error is crucial to the system performance. In this paper,
we propose a pilot sequences allocation strategy to mitigate the
pilot contamination. In this strategy, the pilot sequences sets
are identical for center users, but mutually orthogonal for edge
users in different cells. With mitigated pilot contamination, we
analytically determine the approximate system capacity which is
accurate when the number of antennas at the base station tends
to innite. The simulation results show that the proposed pilot
sequences allocation strategy achieves higher system capacity
than the traditional pilot sequences allocation strategy whose
sequences reuse rate is one or three. There also exists an optimal
number of pilot sequences in different SNR to maximize the
system capacity.
I. I NTRODUCTION
Massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems
where hundreds of antennas simultaneously serve a number
of single-antenna users have attracted much attention in recent
years. Massive MIMO systems can improve the spectral and
energy efciency with orders of magnitude compared with
single-antenna systems [1], [2].
Pilot sequences are used to training channel during the
channel estimation phase. Channel estimation can be per-
formed either in frequency division duplex (FDD) or time
division duplex (TDD) systems. In the FDD massive MIMO
system, channel estimation becomes more challenging because
traditional approaches incur a signicant overhead. Therefore,
most of the massive MIMO researches apply the assumption
of TDD systems with channel reciprocity. In the TDD system,
the orthogonal pilot sequences needed are independent of the
number of antennas at the base station and are proportional to
the number of user antennas [3][5]. The base station is able
to acquire the channel state information (CSI) which can be
used for signal detecting for the uplink and precoding for the
downlink.
Massive MIMO systems with a large number of users can
achieve better system performance at the expense of huge
complexity of channel estimation. As the number of pilot
sequences is limited by coherence time, pilot sequences are
mutually orthogonal in the same cell but reused in different
cells, and perfect CSI can not be achieved in massive MIMO
systems with a large amount of users [1]. The reuse of pilot
sequences causes the inter-cell interference which is called
978-1-4799-8406-0/15/$31.00 2015 IEEE 1488
pilot contamination [6], [7]. As the number of antennas at
base station tends to innity, fast fading channels are approx-
imately orthogonal, and the effects of uncorrelated noise and
fast fading vanish. The only remaining impairment is pilot
contamination which does not vanish with innite antennas
[1].
Many previous literatures have addressed the issue of pilot
contamination. AOA-based methods are proposed in [8][10],
which show that users with mutually non-overlapping AOA
PDFs hardly contaminate each other even if they use the
same pilot sequence. In [11], the eigenvalue-decomposition-
based (EVD) estimation can estimate channel vectors using the
statistics of the received data. A blind pilot decontamination
strategy is proposed in [12]. This strategy eliminates pilot
contamination by separating the interference subspace from
the desired signal subspace. A time-shifted (asynchronous)
protocol is proposed in [14] to mitigate the pilot contami-
nation. Only users from the same group create interference
to each other. Another method to mitigate the effect of pilot
contamination is through orthogonal frequency or orthogonal
pilot sequences [1]. Applying orthogonal frequency or or-
thogonal pilot sequences means fewer users can be served
simultaneously. However, most of the proposed strategies
to eliminate pilot contamination suffer from the defect of
high computational complexities and the request of particular
channel characteristics. When antennas tends to innity, the
channel matrix becomes very large and the complexities of
many operations about channel matrix cannot be tolerated,
such as matrix inversion, eigenvalue decomposition.
In this paper, a low complexity and universal strategy
of pilot sequences allocation is proposed for TDD massive
MIMO systems. We allocate the same pilot sequences set for
the center users, while mutually orthogonal pilot sequences
sets for the edge users in different cells to mitigate the
pilot contamination. With mitigated pilot contamination, we
analytically derive the approximate system capacity which is
accurate when the number of antennas at the base station
tends to innite. Finally, the simulation results show that the
proposed pilot sequences allocation strategy achieves higher
system capacity than the traditional pilot sequences allocation
strategies whose sequences reuse rate is one or three. The op-
timal number of pilot sequences in different SNR to maximize
the system capacity is also given.
The rest of paper is organized as follows. Section II in-
 2015 IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC): - Track 3: Mobile and Wireless Networks

troduces the TDD massive MIMO system model. Our new

pilot sequences allocation strategy is proposed in section N
III. In section IV and V, we investigate the performance of   0
this strategy by analytic and simulation means, respectively.
Conclusions are drawn in section VI.
JO N
Notations: Capital and small bold letters represent matrices
and vectors respectively. The transpose, conjugate and Her-   0 &HOOO
mitian transpose of the matrix are denoted by ()T , () and
()H , respectively. E[] denotes the expectation and  denotes
the second-order norm. CM N is the set of complex matrices
with M rows and N columns. CN (, 2 ) denotes the circular &HOO
symmetric complex Gaussian distribution with mean and
standard deviation . Fig. 1. System model
II. S YSTEM M ODEL
A. Scenario
where rl,k is the distance between the k-th user in cell l and
We consider the scenario of L hexagonal cellular cells. As
the base station in cell 1. r0 is the normalized coefcient. is
shown in Fig.1, the base station is equipped with M antennas
the decay exponent. zl,k represents shadow fading and is a log-
at the center of cell and K single-antenna users are distributed 2
normal random variable, i.e., 10 log10 (zl,k ) CN (0, shad ).
uniformly over the cell, and M  K. Each cell has the same
And zl,k is statistically independent of l and k.
radius of R ( from center to vertex ) and the exclusion of a
central disk of radius Rh .
III. PILOT SEQUENCES ALLOCATION STRATEGY
B. Channel Model
In this paper, we consider a TDD system with channel In this section, we propose a new strategy of pilot sequences
reciprocity. Channel obeys the simple discrete time block- allocation to mitigate the pilot contamination. We assume that
fading law. The uplink channel can be used as an estimation the number of symbols used for channel training is p and
of downlink channel, so only uplink channel is considered. p K. So there are p mutually orthogonal pilot sequences.
Without loss of generality, we just consider the performance The pilot sequences set P is denoted as
of users in cell 1.
The received signal at the base station in cell 1 can be P = {1 , 2 , . . . , p }. (4)
written as
 Pilot sequence k CM 1 in set P is mutually orthogonal
y = pu gl,k xl,k + n (1)
l,k
with each other. And the transmitted power of each k is a
M 1
constant.
where gl,k C represents the channel between the k-th
user in cell l and the M antennas of base station in cell 1. pu k 2 = p pp , k = 1, 2, . . . , p . (5)
is the average transmitted power of each user. xl,k represents
the transmitted data symbol of the k-th user in cell l. And the The inter-cell interference of edge users is more serious
elements of n CM 1 are the independent and identically than the inter-cell interference of center users. Therefore, we
distributed (i.i.d.) CN (0, N0 ) thermal noise, and the noise propose a strategy to eliminate the pilot contamination of edge
power at each destination is normalized to unity. users. In this strategy, the pilot sequences sets are identical for
gl,k , which is dependent on fast fading, geometric attenua- center users with reuse factor 1, but mutually orthogonal for
tion and log-normal shadow fading, can be written as edge users with reuse factor 3. So we can derive the number of
1/2
gl,k = hl,k l,k (2) center users Kc , the number of edge users Ke and the radius
of center users Rc according to K and p .
where hl,k CM 1 represents the fast fading coefcient
between the k-th user in cell l and the antennas of base station 3K p
Kc = , (6)
in cell 1. Each element of hl,k is i.i.d. complex Gaussian 2
variable with zero mean and unit variance. p K
1/2 Ke = , (7)
l,k represents the geometric attenuation and shadow fad- 2
ing. The distances between the base station and users are much 
longer than the distances among antennas at the base station,
1/2 3K p 3 3
so we assumed that l,k is the same for each antenna of the Rc = ( )( )R. (8)
2K 2
base station. l,k can be written as
zl,k As shown in Fig.2, the pilot sequences set P can be par-
l,k = rl,k (3)
( r0 ) titioned into four subsets {PC , PE,1 , PE,2 , PE,3 } according

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 2015 IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC): - Track 3: Mobile and Wireless Networks

3& 3(  3(  3( 
N CM p is white complex Gaussian noise with zero mean
and unit variance.
We can get channel estimation
.F .H .H .H
1
1,k =
g Yp 1,k . (11)
Fig. 2. Pilot sequences sets
p p p
Pilot sequences for center users in different cells are reused
and l,kc = 1,kc . From (10), (11) and l,kc = 1,kc , the
channel estimation for the kc -th center user in cell 1 is derived
&HOOO  as  1
1,kc = g1,kc +
g gl,kc + n1 . (12)
3& pp p
l=1
&HOOO 3( 
3( 
3( 
For the ke -th edge user in cell 1, l,ke and 1,ke are
3&
mutually orthogonal. So the channel estimation is derived as
&HOOO 
1
1,ke = g1,ke +
g n2 . (13)
p p p
3&
n1 and n2 are complex Gaussian noise vectors. The differ-
ence between (12) and (13) is caused by the use of orthogonal
Fig. 3. Pilot sequences strategy
pilot sequences among the edge users in different cells.
B. Data Transmission
During the data transmission phase, the received signal at
to Kc and Ke .
the base station in cell 1 is
PC = {1 , 2 , . . . , Kc }, 
yd = pu gl,k xdl,k + n (14)
PE,1 = {Kc +1 , Kc +2 , . . . , Kc +Ke }, l,k
PE,2 = {Kc +Ke +1 , Kc +Ke +2 , . . . , Kc +2Ke },
where xdl,k is the data symbol transmitted by the k-th user in
PE,3 = {Kc +2Ke +1 , Kc +2Ke +2 , . . . , p }. (9) cell l and n is white Gaussian noise.
The result of pilot sequences allocation is shown in Fig.3. The data symbol x d1,k detected by MF method is
The strategy of pilot sequences allocation is explained as x 1,k
d1,k = g H
yd . (15)
follows:
First, generating the mutually orthogonal pilot sequences
For the kc -th center user in cell 1, the detected data symbol
set P. is

Second, deriving Kc , Ke and Rc . x
d1,kc = pu g1,kc 2 xd1,kc + pu gl,kc 2 xdl,kc
Then, the center users are randomly allocated with the    l=1
pilot sequences in PC . desired signal   
pilot contamination
Finally, to make sure that pilot sequences of edge users 
in adjacent cells are mutually orthogonal, the edge users + pu glH1 ,kc gl2 ,k xdl2 ,k + Wc (16)

in different cells are allocated with pilot sequences PE,1 , (l1 ,kc )=(l2 ,k)
   noise
PE,2 or PE,3 , respectively. other interference

IV. where
PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS

pu  H
We assume that the K users in each cell transmit pilot Wc = gl,k
H
n + n1 gl,k xdl,k . (17)
sequences simultaneously, which is the worst case [1]. Match
c
pp p
l l,k
lter (MF) detector is used at the base station. Then we analyze
The rst term in (16) is the desired signal, the second term
the capacity for center users and edge users, respectively.
is pilot contamination and the third term is interference from
A. Channel Estimation users with different pilot sequences. The last term is noise.
During the pilot transmission phase, the signals received by Similarly, for the ke -th edge user in cell 1,

the base station in cell 1 can be expressed as d1,ke =
x pu g1,ke 2 xd1,ke
   
Yp = p p gl,k H
l,k + N. (10) desired signal

l,k
+ pu g1,k
H
g xd + We (18)
M 1
e l,k l,k 
l,k C , which is selected from pilot sequences set P, (l,k)=(1,ke )
   noise
is the pilot sequence transmitted by the k-th user in cell l. other interference

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 2015 IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC): - Track 3: Mobile and Wireless Networks

TABLE I
where
pu  H
BASIC SIMULATION PARAMETERS
We = g1,ke n +
H
n2 gl,k xdl,k . (19)
p p p parameter value
l,k Number of cells L 7
Cell radius R 1000 m
The rst term in (18) is the desired signal, the second term is
Risk radius Rh 100 m
interference from users with different pilot sequences and the Normalized radius r0 100 m
last term is noise. (18) demonstrates that pilot contamination Decay exponent 3.5
of edge cells is eliminated. Shadow fading standard deviation shad 8 dB
Number of users in each cell K 20
Coherence time 196
C. System Capacity
From (16) we derive the capacity of the kc -th center user
and the ke -th edge user in cell 1. The results are shown in
1

0.9
(20) and (21), respectively.

CDF of capacity of per users in cell 1

0.8
Reuse rate = 1 simulation
Reuse rate = 1 approximation


0.7
Proposed strategy simulation

pu g1,ke 4
0.6 Proposed strategy approximation

Cke = E log2 1+  H g |2 + var(W )

0.5
Reuse rate = 3 simulation

pu (l,k)=(1,ke ) |g1,k
Reuse rate = 3 approximation

e
l,k e 0.4

(21) 0.3

To simplify the results in (20) and (21), the following lemma 0.2

0.1
is used.
Lemma 1: Assuming p, q CM 1 are i.i.d standard com-
0
0 5 10 15 20 25
Capacity of per users in cell 1 (bits/s/Hz)

plex Gaussian random vectors, when M tends to innity, we

have Fig. 4. Capacity CDF of of each user in cell 1 for Eu = 50dB, p = 34.
1
pH q|2 1, as M
a.s.
(22)
M
1 are given in Table I. We keep these parameters in the following
p4 1,
a.s.
as M . (23)
M2 + 2M simulation, unless otherwise stated.
In Fig.4, we compare the capacity CDF (cumulative dis-
Proof : See Appendix A.
tribution function) of each user in cell 1 using the following
From Lemma 1, the capacity of the kc -th center user and
strategies:
the ke -th edge user in cell 1 can be written as (24) and (25),
respectively. 1) The reuse rate = 1 strategy in which pilot sequences sets
When pu = pp = EMu and M tends to innity, the inter- in different cells are the same.
ference term from other users with different pilot sequences 2) The reuse rate = 3 strategy in which pilot sequences sets
can be ignored but pilot contamination and noise terms still in adjacent cells are mutually orthogonal.
remain. (24) and (25) can be simplied to equation (26) and 3) Our proposed strategy in which pilot sequences sets are
(27) as an approximation, respectively. Whats more, (26) and mutually orthogonal for edge users but reused for center
(27) are almost independent of M . users in different cells.
The curves of simulation and approximation are completely

 overlapping, so the approximation in (26) and (27) are accu-
(a2) pu (M 2 + 2M )1,k2
Cke = E log2 1+  pu 
e rate. Compared with the reuse rate = 1 case, our proposed
M l=1 l,ke + M pp p l,k l,k strategy achieves almost the same performance for the users
(27) with high capacity but highly increases the performance for
The sum capacity of all users in cell 1 is users with low capacity. Compared with the reuse rate = 3
slot p  case, our proposed strategy slightly decreases the performance
Ccell1 = Ck (28) for the users with low capacity but highly increases the
slot
k
performance for users with high capacity. Using more pilot
where p is the length of pilot sequences and slot is the coher- sequences decrease the pilot contamination at the expense
ence time. And the channel remains constant in a coherence of longer training period. In order to maximize the system
time. capacity, there exists the optimal number of pilot sequences.
In our strategy, the number of pilot sequences p is adaptive
V. SIMULATION RESULTS
according to SNR, and K p min(3K, slot ). The
In this section, we present numerical results on the per- strategy becomes the reuse rate = 1 case when p = K and
formance of pilot sequences allocation strategy in a multi- the reuse rate = 3 case when p = 3K. In Fig.5, K=20
cell Massive MIMO system. Because the l,k is inversely and K=60 correspond to the reuse rate=1 and reuse rate=3

proportional to the rl,k , we just consider the interference and cases, respectively. More importantly, this gure shows that
noise from adjacent cells. Some basic simulation parameters our strategy is more efcient as it can achieve higher system

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 2015 IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC): - Track 3: Mobile and Wireless Networks


p g 4
Ckc = E log2 1+   u 1,kc (20)
pu l=1 gl,kc 4 + pu (l1 ,kc )=(l2 ,k) |glH1 ,kc gl2 ,k |2 + var(Wc )


(a1) pu (M 2 + 2M )1,k 2
Ckc = E log2 1+  2
 c
 
pu (M 2 + 2M ) l=1 l,k c
+ pu M (l1 ,kc )=(l2 ,k) l1 ,kc l2 ,k + M l=1 l,kc + M pppup l,k l,k
(24)


(a1) pu (M 2 + 2M )1,k
2
Cke = E log2 1+   e
 . (25)
pu M (l,k)=(1,ke ) 1,ke l2 ,k + M l=1 l,ke + M pppup l,k l,k


(a2) pu (M 2 + 2M )1,k 2
Ckc = E log2 1+  2
 c
pu  (26)
pu (M 2 + 2M ) l=1 l,k c
+ M l = 1 l,k c + M pp p l,k l,k

capacity than the other two cases. As pilot contamination is the dominant factor at high SNR, the
strategy with pilot sequences mutually orthogonal in adjacent
80 cells is optimal.
70 VI. CONCLUSION
sum capacity of users in cell 1

60 Eu=30 dB In this paper, a pilot sequences allocation strategy is pro-

Eu=40 dB
50 Eu=50 dB
posed to mitigate the pilot contamination in TDD massive
MIMO systems. We derive an approximation system capacity
40
which is accurate with innity number of antennas. The
30
proposed pilot sequences allocation strategy outperforms the
20 traditional strategy whose pilot sequences reuse rate is one or
10 three. For different SNR, there exists optimal number of pilot
20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60
number of pilot sequences p sequences to maximize the system capacity.

Fig. 5. Sum capacity of users in cell 1 vs. the number of pilot sequences
A PPENDIX
A. Proof of Lemma 1

80

M
|pH q|2 = | pm qm |2
the optimal number of pilot sequences p

70
m=1
60

M 
50
= |pm qm |2 + pm1 qm1 pm2 qm2
m=1 m1 =m2
40
= M E[|pm qm | ] + (M 2 M )E[pm1 qm1 pm2 qm2 ]
2

30 = M E[|pm |2 ]E[|qm |2 ]
20
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80
+(M 2 M )E[pm1 ]E[qm1 ]E[pm2 ]E[qm2 ]
= M
Eu (dB)
(29)
Fig. 6. The optimal number of pilot sequences with different SNR

M
p4 = | |pm |2 |2
The optimal number of pilot sequences with different SNR m=1
is given in Fig.6. It is seen that the optimal number of 
M 
pilot sequences increases slowly with SNR when SNR is = |pm |4 + |gm1 gm2 |2
less than 60dB but increases rapidly to the maximum value m=1 m1 =m2
when SNR is over 60dB. With the increase of SNR, the = M E[|pm |4 ] + (M 2 M )E[|gm1 gm2 |2 ]
effect of pilot contamination becomes much more crucial on
= M E[|pm |4 ] + (M 2 M )E[|gm1 |2 ]E[|gm2 |2 ]
the performance of system, so the optimal number of pilot
sequences increases to reduce such effect. When SNR is over = 3M + (M 2 M )
62dB , our system degenerates to the reuse rate = 3 system. = M 2 + 2M (30)

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 2015 IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC): - Track 3: Mobile and Wireless Networks

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work has been supported by the National Natural
Science Foundation of China (No.61171112) and National 863
High-Tech plan (No.2014AA01A704). The numerical calcu-
lations in this paper have been done on the supercomputing
system in the Supercomputing Center of University of Science
and Technology of China.
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