Baseband processing algorithms often require knowledge of the noise power, signal power, or signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). In practice, these parameters are typically unknown and must be estimated. Furthermore, the mean-square error (MSE) is a desirable metric to be minimized in a variety of estimation and signal recovery algorithms. However, the MSE cannot directly be used as it depends on the true signal that is generally unknown to the estimator. In this paper, we propose novel blind estimators for the average noise power, average receive signal power, SNR, and MSE. The proposed estimators can be computed at low complexity and solely rely on the large-dimensional and sparse nature of the processed data. Our estimators can be used (i) to quickly track some of the key system parameters while avoiding additional pilot overhead, (ii) to design low-complexity nonparametric algorithms that require such quantities, and (iii) to accelerate more sophisticated estimation or recovery algorithms. We conduct a theoretical analysis of the proposed estimators for a Bernoulli complex Gaussian (BCG) prior, and we demonstrate their efficacy via synthetic experiments. We also provide three application examples that deviate from the BCG prior in millimeter-wave multi-antenna and cell-free wireless systems for which we develop nonparametric denoising algorithms that improve channel-estimation accuracy with a performance comparable to denoisers that assume perfect knowledge of the system parameters.
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Blind SNR Estimation and Nonparametric Channel Denoising in Multi-Antenna mmWave Systems
We propose blind estimators for the average noise power, receive signal power, signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), and mean-square error (MSE), suitable for multi-antenna millimeter wave (mmWave) wireless systems. The proposed estimators can be computed at low complexity and solely rely on beamspace sparsity, i.e., the fact that only a small number of dominant propagation paths exist in typical mmWave channels. Our estimators can be used (i) to quickly track some of the key quantities in multi-antenna mmWave systems while avoiding additional pilot overhead and (ii) to design efficient nonparametric algorithms that require such quantities. We provide a theoretical analysis of the proposed estimators, and we demonstrate their efficacy via synthetic experiments and using a nonparametric channel-vector denoising task with realistic multi-antenna mmWave channels.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1717559
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10315886
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- IEEE International Conference on Communications
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.1109/ICC42927.2021.9500387
