Uplink channel estimation for massive MIMO systems exploring joint channel sparsity

The joint sparsity of uplink channels in massive multi-input-multi-output (MIMO) systems is explored and a block sparse model is proposed for joint channel estimation. The block coherence of this model is analysed. It is indicated that as the number of antennas at the base station grows to be infinity, the block coherence will be zero. Then a block optimised orthogonal matching pursuit (BOOMP) algorithm is proposed. Simulation results verify the analysis and show that the joint estimation using the BOOMP algorithm can significantly improve the channel estimation performance.