Joint CFO and Channel Estimation for RIS-aided Multi-user Massive MIMO Systems

Accurate channel estimation is essential to achieve the performance gains promised by the use of reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) in wireless communications. In the uplink of multi-user orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) systems, synchronization errors such as carrier frequency offsets (CFOs) can significantly degrade the channel estimation performance. This becomes more critical in RIS-aided communications, as even a small channel estimation error leads to a significant performance loss. Motivated by this, we propose a joint CFO and channel estimation method for RIS-aided multi-user massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems. Our proposed pilot structure allows accurate estimation of the CFOs without multi-user interference (MUI), using the same pilot resources for both CFO estimation and channel estimation. For joint estimation of multiple users' CFOs, a correlation-based approach is devised using the received signals at all BS antennas. Using least-squares (LS) estimation with the obtained CFO values, the channels of all users are jointly estimated. For optimization of the RIS phase shifts at the data transmission stage, we propose a projected gradient method (PGM). Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed method provides an improvement in the normalized mean-square error (NMSE) of channel estimation as well as in the bit error rate (BER) performance.

Low-Complexity Joint CFO and CIR Estimation for RIS-aided wireless communications using OFDM

Accurate channel estimation is essential for achieving the performance gains offered by reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS)-assisted wireless communications. Recently, a large number of channel estimation methods for RIS-assisted wireless communications have been proposed. However, none of the existing methods takes into account the influence of carrier frequency offset (CFO). In general, CFO can significantly degrade channel estimation for orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems, since it breaks the orthogonality of subcarriers. Motivated by this, we investigate the effect of CFO on channel estimation for RIS-aided OFDM systems. Furthermore, we propose a joint CFO and channel impulse response (CIR) estimation method for RIS-aided OFDM systems. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed joint CFO and CIR estimation method, and also demonstrate that the use of the time domain for estimation in this context results in a factor of 10 improvement in the mean-squared error (MSE) performance of channel estimation. Finally, the total computational complexity of the proposed method, including both CFO and channel estimation, is lower than the complexity of the conventional frequency-domain channel estimation method without CFO estimation.