Near-Field Channel Estimation for mmWave/THz Communications with Extremely Large-Scale UPAs

Abstract

Extremely large antenna arrays (ELAAs) are widely adopted in mmWave/THz communications to compensate for the severe path loss, wherein the channel estimation remains a significant challenge since the Rayleigh distance of ELAAs stretches to tens or even hundreds of meters and the near-field channel model should be considered. Existing polar-domain based methods and block-sparse based methods are originally devised for Uniform Linear Arrays (ULAs) near-field channel estimation. The polar-domain based method can be applied to Uniform Planar Arrays (UPAs), but it behaves plain since it ignores the specific sparsity structure of the UPA near-field channels. Meanwhile, the block-sparse based method cannot be extended to the UPA scenarios directly. To address these issues, we first reformulate the original UPA near-field channel as an outer product of two ULA near-field channels and we construct a modified two-dimensional DFT (2D-DFT) dictionary for it. With the proposed dictionary, we further prove that the UPA near-field channel admits a 2D block-sparse structure. Leveraging this specific sparse structure, we solve the channel estimation problem with the 2D Pattern-Coupled Sparse Bayesian Learning (2D-PCSBL) algorithm. Simulation results show that the proposed approach outperforms conventional existing methods while maintaining a comparable computational complexity.

Figures (4)

• Figure 1: The 2D sparse structure of $\bm{\Sigma}$
• Figure 2: The 2D pattern-coupled structure of $\bm{\beta}$
• Figure 3: NMSEs of respective algorithms vs. SNR
• Figure 4: NMSEs of respective algorithms vs. T

Theorems & Definitions (4)

• Theorem 1
• proof
• Remark 1
• Remark 2