Massive MIMO for Crowd Scenarios: A Solution Based on Random Access

Abstract: This paper presents a new approach to intra-cell pilot contamination in crowded massive MIMO scenarios. The approach relies on two essential properties of a massive MIMO system, namely near-orthogonality between user channels and near-stability of channel powers. Signal processing techniques that take advantage of these properties allow us to view a set of contaminated pilot signals as a graph code on which iterative belief propagation can be performed. This makes it possible to decontaminate pilot signals and increase the throughput of the system. The proposed solution exhibits high performance with large improvements over the conventional method. The improvements come at the price of an increased error rate, although this effect is shown to decrease significantly for increasing number of antennas at the base station.