Pilot Decontamination in Massive Multiple Input Multiple Output

Pilot Contamination (PC) has been considered as a major limiting factor of Time Division Duplexing (TDD) Massive Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (M-MIMO) systems, as it will make the signal to interference plus noise ratio (SINR) saturated. Similarly, several mitigation techniques such as Eigenvalue decomposition, cooperative Bayesian channel estimation, blind equalization technique, time staggering pilot, smart pilot assignment, etc. proposed in literature to address PC issue have limitations. These proposed methods are either based on initializing all pilot sequences allocated for training as requested by users or require coordination among neighboring cells. Either process is found to be difficult as synchronizing different levels of the network (micro, nano, and pico-cells) and possibly many cells are not only difficult but a huge task of high computational complexity that requires coordination among neighboring cells. Therefore, this research work developed a Pilot Allocation Protocol (PAP) decontamination technique.