Semi-Blind Channel Estimation and Hybrid Receiver Beamforming in the Tera-Hertz Multi-User Massive MIMO Uplink

We develop a pragmatic multi-user (MU) massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) channel model tailored to the THz band, encompassing factors such as molecular absorption, reflection losses and multipath diffused ray components. Next, we propose a novel semi-blind based channel state information (CSI) acquisition technique i.e. MU whitening decorrelation semi-blind (MU-WD-SB) that exploits the second order statistics corresponding to the unknown data symbols along with pilot vectors. A constrained Cramer-Rao Lower Bound (C-CRLB) is derived to bound the normalized mean square error (NMSE) performance of the proposed semi-blind learning technique. Our proposed scheme efficiently reduces the training overheads while enhancing the overall accuracy of the channel learning process. Furthermore, a novel hybrid receiver combiner framework is devised for MU THz massive MIMO systems, leveraging multiple measurement vector based sparse Bayesian learning (MMV-SBL) that relies on the estimated CSI acquired through our proposed semi-blind technique relying on low resolution analog-to-digital converters (ADCs). Finally, we propose an optimal hybrid combiner based on MMV-SBL, which directly reduces the MU interference. Extensive simulations are conducted to evaluate the performance gain of the proposed MU-WD-SB scheme over conventional training-based and other semi-blind learning techniques for a practical THz channel obtained from the high-resolution transmission (HITRAN) database. The metrics considered for quantifying the improvements include the NMSE, bit error rate (BER) and spectral-efficiency (SE).