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Encryption Based Strategy to Overcome the Problem of Pilot Contamination

Within Multi-cellular Massive MIMO Systems

Article in Wireless Personal Communications · October 2021

DOI: 10.1007/s11277-021-08349-8

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Wireless Personal Communications
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11277-021-08349-8

Encryption Based Strategy to Overcome the Problem of Pilot

Contamination Within Multi‑cellular Massive MIMO Systems

Mohamed Boulouird1 · Abdelfettah Belhabib2 · Abdelhamid Riadi2

Accepted: 19 February 2021

© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2021

Abstract
The problem of inter-cell interferences keeps its site as the most challenging constraint
that faces the massive multi-input multi-output (M-MIMO) technology. This constraint,
known as the problem of pilot contamination (PC), is a direct result of reusing the same set
of orthogonal pilot sequences (OPSs) across several cells, due to the scarcity of available
pilot resources, compared to the number of the user equipments (UEs) that must be served,
the reuse of the same OPSs within different cells is unavoidable. Accordingly, assigning
the available OPSs to the UEs should be managed to address the PC problem. To reach
that goal, a new decontaminating strategy is proposed herein, which is referred to as the
ENCryption-based decontaminating strategy (ENC). The ENC strategy is based on inject-
ing some recognition pilot symbols within the pilot sequence of the UEs; hence, the base
stations become able to distinguish between the desired pilot signals from the undesired
ones, therefore, the quality of servicecan be enhanced, furthermore, the proposed ENC
strategy is of low computational complexity compared to the existing strategies.

Keywords Massive MIMO · Pilot contamination · Recognition pilot symbols · Multi-

cellular systems · Time division duplex · 5G wireless communications

1 Introduction

Due to the increasing demand for high data rate, and in order to enhance the quality-of-
services, a promising technology is proposed one decade ago [1], and it was called massive
MIMO (M-MIMO) technology. M-MIMO is achieved through, simply, largely-increasing

* Mohamed Boulouird
m.boulouird@uca.ac.ma
Abdelfettah Belhabib
abdelfettah.belhabib@edu.uca.ac.ma
Abdelhamid Riadi
abdelhamid.riadi@edu.uca.ac.ma
1
Smart Systems and Applications (SSA) Group, National School of Applied Sciences of Marrakesh
(ENSA‑M), Cadi Ayyad University, Marrakesh, Morocco
2
Instrumentation, Signals and Physical Systems (I2SP) Group, Faculty of Sciences Semlalia, Cadi
Ayyad University, Marrakesh, Morocco

13
Vol.:(0123456789)
 M. Boulouird et al.

the number of the antennas at the base stations (BSs); accordingly, BSs become able to
exploit more space, which allows the BSs to, simultaneously, serving dozens of the user
equipments (UEs); furthermore, a large number of the antennas at the BSs leads to hard-
ening the channels, and simplifies the signal processing at the BSs [2]. Since the avail-
able pilot resources are very limited, the frequency-division duplex protocol (FDD) [3] is
not desired for M-MIMO [1], instead, M-MIMO works perfectly under the time division
duplex protocol (TDD), in which the BSs exploit the reciprocity property of the TDD to
estimate the downlink channels from the estimated channels of the uplink phase. With
sixty-four antennas at the BSs, M-MIMO was finally deployed in the sub-six GHz band-
width, and it was renewed M-MIMO 2.0 [4]. Indeed, the large benefits of M-MIMO are not
yet, fully, achieved.
The restrictions imposed by the scarcity of the available amount of the orthogonal pilot
sequences (OPSs) obliges the BSs to exploit the same set of the OPSs; specifically, the BSs,
of several cells, are obliged to reuse the same OPSs. This unavoidable fact leads to falling
in a disastrous phenomenon known as the problem of pilot contamination (PC) [5–8]. The
PC problem is the main impairment that faces the M-MIMO technology. The PC problem
is illustrated in Fig. 1, where the same pilot sequences is assigned to the two users k1 and
k2; consequently, their hosted BSs received the pilot signals of both users; hence, the two
BSs become unable to distinguish between the desired and the undesired pilot signals.

2 Related Works

The knowledge of the channel state information (CSI) is needed at the BSs. However, the
problem of inter-cell interference (i.e. PC problem) damages the quality of the estimated
CSIs at the BSs. Hence, several strategies have been proposed to overcome the PC prob-
lem [9, 10]. In [9], a greedy algorithm is exploited to enhance the per-cell spectral effi-
ciency (SE), where the QoSs is enhanced for most of the UEs at the expense of some UEs,
which are already suffering from low QoSs. Referring to the graph-based coloring the-
ory, a graph coloring (GC) based strategy is proposed in the work of [11], which propose

Fig. 1  Illustration of the problem of pilot contamination

13
Encryption Based Strategy to Overcome the Problem of Pilot…

to construct a graph of interference, where its nodes refers to the UEs, whereas its edges
describes the strength of the PC between the UEs; therefore, the PC problem is signifi-
cantly decreased by allocating orthogonal PSs to the UEs that causes the highest influence
of the PC. A weighted GC (WGC) based strategy is proposed in the work of [12], and it
comes to decrease the high computational complexity of the GC decontaminating strategy.
In [13], the authors propose to classify the UEs, based on their signal-to-interference-plus-
noise-ratio (SINR), into two groups; therefore, the UEs with low SINR are assigned with
OPSs, whereas non-OPSs are allocated to the rest of the UEs. In [14, 15], SPR was coupled
with the WGC strategy, where the UEs are classified based on their position within cells;
therefore, full pilot reuse is dedicated to the center UEs, the middle users (i.e., between the
center and the edge of the cell) are served based on the WGC, whereas the edge UEs are
assigned with OPSs; hence, the QoSs is enhanced for all UEs.
To enhance the security of the communications, the jamming suppression based strat-
egy is proposed in [16], where an improved zero-forcing detector is derived to cancel the
jamming attacks; however, this strategy assumes having access to an extra number of the
OPSs. To boost the secrecy of the data transmission, [17] proposes the use of an active
eavesdropper to crucify the constructed detectors at the BSs against the contamination
attacks, therefore, to avoid the leakage of the data signals towards the undesired destina-
tion, therefore, a likelihood ratio test (LRT) can be employed to help the eavesdropper to
generate similar PSs as the legitimate UE. The studies of [18–20] aims to maximize the
SINR of the UEs having the worst channel quality; this under the total power constraint. A
SPR based multi-cell block diagonalization is proposed in [21], where the singular value
decomposition is exploited to pre-code the data symbols through the null subspace of inter-
ference. In [22], the space signature, the GC theory, and the channel characteristics are
exploited to assign OPSs to the UEs having such overlapped angle-of-arrivals, while simi-
lar PSs are reused for the UEs of non-overlapped AoAs. The pilot symbols are employed
in [23] instead of the habitual pilot sequences, where the same pilot symbols are shifted in
the time-domain, hence, extra UEs can be served, and the spectral efficiency can be signifi-
cantly enhanced.
A smart switching strategy is proposed in [24], where the SPR and the WGC strate-
gies are coupled under a supervision rule, which aims to reduce both the PC effect and the
problem of pilot overhead. A dynamic power allocation scheme is proposed in [25], where
the transmit power is updated based on the localization of the UEs within cells. In [10], the
UEs are exploited to mitigate the PC problem, where the PSs are cooperatively shared by
the UEs of adjacent cells; hence, the QoS can be enhanced for all UEs that belong to neigh-
boring cells. The authors of [26] proposed a dynamic strategy, in which the adjacent BSs
cooperates with each other to reduce the influence of the PC problem upon their supported
UEs.

2.1 Contribution

Unlike the previous studies, which either suffer from the problem of the pilot overhead or
from a high level of computational complexity. In this paper, we propose a low complexity
encryption-based strategy to mitigate the problem of the PC. Specifically, a set of RPSs is
injected in the PSs of the UEs, where the same RPS is employed by the UEs of the same cell
in non-overlapped time slots, while orthogonal RPSs are used for the UEs of each adjacent
cells. Accordingly, the desired signals are empowered, which leads to enhance the QoS to the

13
 M. Boulouird et al.

UEs. Simulation results prove the effectiveness of the proposed ENC compared to both the
conventional strategy [1] and the conventional WGC [12].

2.2 Organization

The remaining of this paper is as follows. In Sect. 3, the system model of M-MIMO is pre-
sented and the PC is briefly reviewed. The proposed strategy is investigated in Sect. 4. The
simulation results are presented in Sect. 5; finally, a conclusion is given in Sect. 6.

3 System Model

In this section, we present the adopted system model. Thus, we consider a multi-cellular
M-MIMO system, composed of L hexagonal cells (Fig. 2).
Each cell is equipped with a centered BS of M antennas and a K ≪ M single-antenna
UEs. By adopting the uncorrelated Rayleigh-fading channel model [5], the channel vector
𝐡j,l,k ∈ CM×1 that links the kth UE of the lth cell to the BS of the jth cell can be expressed as
√
𝐡j,l,k = 𝛽j,l,k 𝐠j,l,k , (1)

where the corresponding small scale fading (SSF) vector is denoted 𝐠j,l,k ∈ CM×1, and the
SSF vectors are independent and identically distributed for the K UEs, and obey to a cir-
cularly symmetric complex Gaussian distributions of an M × 1 zero-mean vector 𝟎M and
a covariance matrix IM i.e. 𝐠j,l,k ∼ CN(𝟎M , IM ). While 𝛽j,l,k refers to the large scale fading

Fig. 2  Illustration of L = 7 hexagonal cells with K = 3 UEs

13
Encryption Based Strategy to Overcome the Problem of Pilot…

(LSF) coefficient, which accounts for the path loss and shadow fading and it is expressed as
in [21] as follows:
zj,l,k
𝛽j,l,k =
(rj,l,k ∕R)𝛼
, (2)

where rj,l,k is the distance between the kth UE of the lth cell and the BS of the jth cell,
zj,l,k modulates the shadow fading, which is a log-normal variable (i.e., 10log10 (zj,l,k )) that
follows a zero-mean Gaussian distribution characterized by a standard deviation 𝜎shadow,
the cell radius is denoted R, while 𝛼 represents the path loss exponent of the surrounded
environment.
Therefore, the channel matrix (i.e. channel state information (CSI)) of the K UEs in
the lth cell to the BS of the jth cell can be represented as
Hj,l = [hj,l,1 , hj,l,2 , … , hj,l,K ]
1 (3)
= Gj,l Dj,l2 ,

where Gj,l = [gj,l,1 , gj,l,2 , … , gj,l,K ] ∈ CM×K arranges the SSF vectors, while
Dj,l = diag{𝛽j,l,1 , 𝛽j,l,2 , … , 𝛽j,l,K } represents a K × K diagonal matrix that arranges the LSF
coefficients of the K UEs of the lth cell to the BS of the jth cell.
Therefore, the widely TDD protocol is adopted herein, which is the most recom-
mended protocol to the M-MIMO technology, due to its beneficial characteristic, which
is known as the reciprocity characteristic (i.e. the UL and DL channels are recipro-
cal) [27, 28]. Accordingly, the PSs are only transmitted during the UL for the chan-
nel training, while the DL channels are considered to be the transpose of the UL chan-
nels [27]. Specifically, the PSs are only employed during the UL phase, which can save
more bandwidth for data transmission. Therefore, by adopting the block fading channel
model, the wireless communication between the pair UEs-BSs can be divided into three
specific phases [29]: Channel training, data-detection, and data-precoding. These phases
are investigated in detail in the following section.
The conventional (i.e. the same set of the OPSs is reused across the overall cells, and
the UEs are randomly assigned with those pilots [1]) UL SINR of the kth UE of the jth
cell is expressed, in the asymptotic regime ( M → ∞), as in [12] as
2
𝛽j,j,k
SINRu,c
j,k
= ∑ 2
. (4)
l=1,l≠j 𝛽j,l,k

Since the same PSs are reused across different cells, the SINRu,c
j,k
in (4) reaches a bounded
value for M → ∞, which is caused by the PC problem. Thus, the PC is considered to be the
main constraint that hampers the M-MIMO technology. Therefore, the conventional DL
d,c
SINRj,k is also expressed as in [12] as
2
𝛽j,j,k
SINRd,c
j,k
= ∑ 2
. (5)
l=1,l≠j 𝛽l,j,k

Hence, the average UL and DL achievable rate for the considered UE can be expressed,
respectively, as follows

13
 M. Boulouird et al.

{ u,c
Cj,k = (1 − 𝜇)E{log2 (1 + SINRu,c
j,k
)}
(6)
Cj,k = (1 − 𝜇)E{log2 (1 + SINRd,c
d,c
j,k
)}.

where 0 < 𝜇 < 1 refers to the loss of the SE due to the problem of the pilot overhead, while
E{⋅} denotes the mathematical expectation. Since the expression of the average uplink/
downlink achievable rate is a function of the SINR, the fulfilled average achievable rate is
also vulnerable to be saturated, which is inconsistent with the main goal of the M-MIMO.

4 Proposed Strategy

Due to the problem of the PC, the BSs become unable to distinguish between the
desired and the undesired pilot signals transmitted from the UEs, which lead to degrade
the accuracy of the estimated channels at the BSs, thus, degrade the QoS. To deal with
this constraint, we propose to inject some RPSs within the PSs of the UEs. Specifically,
the same RPS is used for the UEs of the same cell in non-overlapping time slots, while
orthogonal RPSs are used for the UEs of the adjacent cells. Thus, extra L orthogonal
pilot symbols are required, where the only difference between the PSs of the cells lies in
the RPSs, hence, the length of the PSs become (𝜏 + 1) instead of the conventional strate-
gies where it was 𝜏 i.e. the PS of the kth UE in the jth cell is then expressed as
j
𝜓k = [𝜙1k , 𝜙2k , … , 𝜙𝜏k , 𝜙rec
j
] ∈ C1×(𝜏+1) , (7)

where 𝜙rec
j
denotes the RPS used for the UEs of the jth cell. Notice that there is no intra-cell
interferences, thus, the PSs of the same cell are considered to be pair-wise orthogonal, i.e.,
j
𝜓k (𝜓kl � )H = 𝛿k,k� (𝜏 + 𝛿j,l ). (8)

Therefore, the set of the PSs 𝛷j ∈ CK×(𝜏+1) employed for the K UEs of the jth cell can be
expressed as
j j j j
𝛷j = [(𝜓1 )T , (𝜓2 )T , … , (𝜓k )T , … , (𝜓K )T ]T (9)

Thus, the orthogonality condition can be generally expressed as

{
(𝜏 + 1)IK if j = l
𝛷j 𝛷lH =
𝜏IK if j ≠ l
, (10)

where IK denotes a K × K identity matrix. (the proof of (10) is given in the “Appendix 7.1”
by (23)).

4.1 Channel Estimation

The UEs, simultaneously, UL their PSs. Accordingly, the received pilot signal
Yj ∈ CM×(𝜏+1) at the BS of the jth cell can be expressed as

13
Encryption Based Strategy to Overcome the Problem of Pilot…

√ �
L
Yj = 𝜌p Hj,l 𝛷l + Nj
l=1
(11)
√ �
L
√
= 𝜌p Hj,j 𝛷j + 𝜌p Hj,l 𝛷l + Nj ,
l=1,l≠j

where 𝜌p denotes the average transmit power during the training phase, while Nj denotes
the additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN), which can be made small through increasing
the number of the antennas at BSs towards the infinity. Therefore, the estimated channels at
the BS of the jth cell is proved in the “Appendix 7.2”, and it can be expressed as

�
L Nj 𝛷jH
Ĥ j,j = (𝜏 + 1) Hj,j + 𝜏 Hj,l + √ . (12)
l=1,l≠j 𝜌p

Hence, the desired channel (i.e. first component of (12)) is multiplied with (𝜏 + 1), while
the undesired channels (i.e second component of (12)) are multiplied with 𝜏 . Accordingly,
the estimated channel of the kth UE in the jth cell can be expressed as:

∑
L
ĥ j,j,k = (𝜏 + 1)hj,j,k + 𝜏hj,l,k + nj,k , (13)
l=1,l≠j
j
nj (𝜙k )H
where nj,k refers to the kth column of √
𝜌p
.

4.2 Data Detection

Once the BSs, successfully, estimate the channel vectors of each UE, the UEs UL their
data symbols. Accordingly, the kth UE of the jth cell, UL its data symbols xj,k where
E(|xj,k |2 ) = 1, thus, the received data signal yj,k at the BS of the jth cell is

√ �
L
yj,k = 𝜌u hj,l,k xl,k + nuj,k (14)
l=1

where 𝜌u refers to the transmitted power during the UL phase, while nuj,k denotes the AWGN
at the M antennas of the jth BS. Therefore, by adopting the low complexity Matched
Filter(MF) detector, the detected data symbols transmitted from the kth UE of the jth cell
can be expressed as

13
 M. Boulouird et al.

x̂ j,k = ĥ H
j,j,k yj,k

√ �
L
= 𝜌u ((𝜏 + 1)hj,j,k + 𝜏hj,l,k + nj,k )H
l=1,l≠j

�
L
× (hj,j,k xj,k + hj,l,k xl,k + nuj,k )
l=1,l≠j
√ (15)
= 𝜌u ((𝜏 + 1)hH
j,j,k hj,j,k xj,k

�
L
+𝜏 hH u
j,l,k hj,l,k xl,k ) + 𝜖j,k
l=1,l≠j
� �
M→∞ √ �
L
x̂ j,k ����������→
� 𝜌u M (𝜏 + 1)𝛽j,j,k xj,k + 𝜏 𝛽j,l,k xl,k
l=1,l≠j

It should be noticed that the uncorrelated term 𝜖j,k

u
vanishes as M tends toward the infinity.
Nevertheless, it can be expressed as

√ H
�
L
H
u
𝜖j,k = 𝜌u ((𝜏 + 1)nj,k hj,j,k xj,k + 𝜏nj,k hj,l,k xl,k )
l=1,l≠j
√ H √
𝜌u nj,k nuj,k 𝜌u ((𝜏 + 1)hH (16)
u
+ + j,j,k nj,k

� L
+ 𝜏hH u
j,l,k nj,k )
l=1,l≠j

Therefore, the SINRuj,k of the considered UE (i.e. UE k in cell j) can be expressed as follows:

𝜌u �(𝜏 + 1)hH h �2
j,j,k j,j,k
SINRuj,k = ∑L
𝜌u l=1,l≠j �𝜏hH h �2 + �𝜖j,k
j,l,k j,l,k
�
u 2

(17)
𝜌u �hH h �2
j,j,k j,j,k
= ∑L
𝜏 2
𝜌u ( 𝜏+1 ) l=1,l≠j
�hH h �2 + �𝜖j,k
j,l,k j,l,k
u 2
�

where |·| denotes the absolute value; therefore, the corresponding asymptotic UL SINR can
be expressed as
2
𝛽j,j,k
SINRuj,k = 𝜏 ∑L . (18)
2 2
( 𝜏+1 ) l=1,l≠j 𝛽j,l,k

Hence, the undesired components in the denominator of the SINRuj,k are multiplied with
a constant 𝛾𝜏 = ( 𝜏+1
𝜏 2
) , which is smaller than one; consequently, this constant, automati-
cally, decreases the impact of the interference components, thus, boost the fulfilled SINR.
Therefore, the degradable influence of the PC is then reduced compared to the conven-
tional strategy.

13
Encryption Based Strategy to Overcome the Problem of Pilot…

4.3 Data Precoding

To transmit the data symbols toward the target UEs, BSs use precoders. Thus, by adopt-
ing the low complexity matched filter (MF)-precoder wl,j,k = ĥ ∗l,j,k , the received data sig-
nal at the kth UE of the jth cell can be expressed as

√ � T
L
yj,k = 𝜌d hj,l,k wl,j,k xl,k + ndj,k . (19)
l=1

where 𝜌d denotes the transmitted power on the DL phase, while xl,k refers to the data sym-
bols transmitted from the lth BS toward the kth UE where E(|xl,k |2 ) = 1, and ndj,k denotes
the AWGN at the antenna of the kth UE. Similarly to the analysis provided in the UL
phase, the fulfilled DL SINRdj,k for the kth UE of the jth cell can be expressed as

𝜌d �hTj,j,k h∗j,j,k �2
SINRdj,k = ∑L (20)
𝜌d l=1,l≠j
�𝛾𝜏 hTl,j,k h∗l,j,k �2 + �𝜖j,k
d 2
�

2
M→∞ 𝛽j,j,k
����������→
�
2
∑L 2
, (21)
(𝛾𝜏 ) l=1,l≠j 𝛽l,j,k

where 𝜖j,k
d
arranges the corresponding interference, and it can be derived similarly to 𝜖j,k u
of
(18), while (21) is obtained in the asymptotic regime. It should be noticed that the exact
expression of the precoder is expressed as wl,j,k = ĥ ∗l,j,k ∕||ĥ ∗l,j,k || (notice that ||.|| denotes the
norm symbol), and to the sake of simplicity, we have omitted the normalization factor in
the derivation but not in the simulation analysis. It should be noticed that the achievable
rate obtained based on the ENC strategy can be obtained through substituting the SINR of
(6) by the new expressions i.e (17) for the uplink and (20) for the downlink.

5 Simulation Results

In this section, the performance of the proposed decontaminating strategy is evaluated

through a set of Monte-Carlo simulations. A typical multi-cell M-MIMO of L hexagonal
cells is considered, where each cell is centered with a BS of M antennas and K single
antenna UEs. The geographical localizations of the UEs within cells is updated in each
trial, and the considered parameters in our simulations are summarized and listed in
Table 1.
Since the number of the antennas of BSs is one of the pillars of M-MIMO, Fig. 3
depicts the average uplink achievable rate versus the number of the antennas deployed
at the BSs, where the performance of the conventional scheme (CS), the WGC, and the
proposed ENC strategy are compared; It is well noticed that the WGC has similar per-
formance as the CS in the first range of 32 ≤ M < 128, while it starts to perform better
than the CS from M = 128, indeed, the ENC performs better than both conventional
strategies for the overall values of M. Accordingly, the proposed strategy performs bet-
ter than both CS, and WGC strategies in the uplink phase.

13
 M. Boulouird et al.

Table 1  Simulation settings

Number of cells L=7
Number of the antennas BSs 32 ≤ M ≤ 256
Number of the UEs per cell K = 10
Number of the OPSs S = 10
Cell radius R = 500 m
Inner radius r = 30 m
Transmit power for training 𝜌p 𝜌p = 15 dBm
Uplink transmit power 𝜌u 5 dBm ≤ 𝜌u ≤ 20 dBm
Downlink transmit power 𝜌d 5 dBm ≤ 𝜌d ≤ 20 dBm
Path loss exponent 𝛼=3
Log normal shadowing fading 𝜎shadow = 8 dB
Pilot overhead parameter 0 < 𝜇 < 1, fixed 𝜇 = 0.05

Fig. 3  Average uplink achievable 32

rate versus M, 𝜌u = 15 dBm
30
Average UL achievable rate (bps/Hz)

28
CS
26 WGC
ENC
24

22

20

18

16

14
32 64 128 256
Number of base station antennas (M)

Fig. 4  Average downlink achiev- 32

able rate versus M, 𝜌d = 15 dBm
30

28
Average DL achievable rate(bps/Hz)

26 CS
WGC
24 ENC

22

20

18

16

14

12
32 64 128 256
Number of base station antennas (M)

13
Encryption Based Strategy to Overcome the Problem of Pilot…

Fig. 5  Average uplink achievable 25.6

rate versus 𝜌u, where M = 128
25.4

Average UL achievable rate (bps/Hz)

25.2
CS
WGC
25 ENC

24.8

24.6

24.4

0 20 40 60 80 100
Uplink transmit power (mWatt)

Fig. 6  Average downlink 25.6

achievable rate versus 𝜌d , where
25.4
M = 128
25.2
Average DL achievable rate(bps/Hz)

25 CS
WGC
24.8
ENC
24.6

24.4

24.2

24

23.8

23.6
0 20 40 60 80 100
Downlink transmit power (mWatt)

To check the reliability of the ENC strategy at the downlink phase, in Fig. 4, we
plot the average downlink achievable rate versus M for the three strategies (i.e. CS,
WGC, and the proposed ENC strategy). Here, it is well seen that similar performance
is obtained for the CS and the WGC strategies, and these two strategies perform worst
than the proposed ENC strategy in the whole considered range of M.
To show the influence of the transmitted power on the performance of the ENC, Fig. 5
depicts the average uplink achievable rate versus the uplink transmit power 𝜌ul , the supe-
riority of the proposed ENC strategy is well seen for the considered range of the transmit
power on the uplink phase, where the ENC strategy reaches its maximum at two values
𝜌ul = 26 mWatt and 𝜌ul = 100 mWatt.
The average downlink achievable rate versus the transmit downlink power 𝜌dl is plotted
in Fig. 6. From this figure, the ENC strategy outperforms both the CS and WGC strategy
by about 1 mWatt for the range 0 mWatt ≤ 𝜌dl ≤ 100 mWatt, on the other side, the average
downlink achievable rate is increased from 24.7 bps/Hz at 𝜌dl = 5 mWatt to reach about

13
 M. Boulouird et al.

25 bps/Hz at 𝜌dl ≤ 100 mWatt . Accordingly, increasing the transmit power has little influ-
ence on the reached performance, in fact, 𝜌dl ≤ 26 mWatt is sufficient to get the maximum
achievable rate based on the proposed ENC strategy.

5.1 Further Discussion

From the simulation results, the well-noticed remark is the fact that the performance
achieved based on the proposed ENC strategy outperforms those obtained based on the
WGC generally by about 1.5 bps/Hz, which is good but need to be improved. Nevertheless,
the ENC strategy can be considered as a low computational complexity strategy, where it is
only O(SKL), while the WGC strategy reaches O(S(KL)3 ) e.g. for a system of K = S = 10
and L = 7 cells, the computational complexity of the ENC is only SLK = 7.102, while the
WGC​ reaches about S(KL)3 = 34, 3 × 105. Furthermore, the proposed ENC strategy out-
performs the WGC in both uplink and downlink phases with a low computational complex-
ity, which proves the effectiveness of the proposed ENC strategy.

5.2 Interpretation of the Simulation Results

From the Figs. 3 and 4, we remark that the average uplink and downlink achievable rate
increases by increasing the number of the antennas deployed at the BSs. In practice, trans-
mitting data symbols through the environment is subject to some constraints, such as the
channel aging, fading, canceling by the obstacles …, which leads to reaching a small aver-
age uplink/downlink achievable rate; however, by increasing the number of the antennas
at the BSs, the transmitted data symbols can arrive at/from the UEs in many channels at
several antennas, which leads to compensate the impairment that can happen for any anten-
nas. That why the reached achievable rate increases by increasing the number of antennas
deployed at the BSs.
From the Figs. 5 and 6, the average uplink and downlink achievable rate increases by
increasing the transmit power. This is because sending data symbols with high power leads
to strengthening the signals; consequently, the transmitted signals become able to propa-
gate for long distances; furthermore, the signals with high power are hard to be blocked by
small obstacles.

6 Conclusion

Unfortunately, the large benefits of M-MIMO technology are not yet fulfilled due to the
limitation imposed by the problem of pilot contamination. Regarding the fact that the avail-
able time-frequency resources are shared by the pilot signaling (for channel training) and
the data transmission (during the uplink and downlink), the number of the pilot resources
that can be used for the channel training is limited, thus, similar pilots are unavoidably
reused across several cells, which gives birth to the problem of pilot contamination that
degrades the channel condition, consequently, damages the quality-of-service. To deal with
these constraints, a new low complexity mitigating strategy is proposed herein, which aims
to boost the quality-of-service for the user equipments, where a recognition pilot symbols
are wisely injected in the pilot sequence of the user equipments, which leads to significant
improvement with low computational complexity, which makes it easy for the M-MIMO.

13
Encryption Based Strategy to Overcome the Problem of Pilot…

Appendix

The Proof of (10)

A RPS is injected between the PS of each UE, where the same pilot symbol is reused for
the UEs of the same cell, while orthogonal ones are used for the adjacent cells. Thus,
the set of the PSs used by the UEs of the jth cell can be expressed as follows:

⎛ 𝜓 j ⎞ ⎛𝜙rec
j
𝜙21 𝜙31 … 𝜙𝜏+1
1
⎞
⎜ 1j ⎟ ⎜ 𝜙1 𝜙rec 𝜙32 … 𝜙𝜏+1 ⎟
𝜓
𝛷j = ⎜ 2 ⎟ = ⎜ 2 j 2 ⎟
(22)
⎜⋮⎟ ⎜ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⎟
⎜𝜓 j ⎟ ⎜ 𝜙1 𝜙2 … 𝜙𝜏K 𝜙rec ⎟
⎝ K⎠ ⎝ K K j ⎠

It is well seen that the same RPS (i.e. 𝜙rec

j
for the UEs of the jth cell) is employed by the
UEs of the same cell in a non-overlapped time slots i.e. the first row of (22) corresponds to
the UE−1 of cell−j and it uses 𝜙rec
j
in its first time slot, while in the second row the same
RPS is used in the second time slot and so on for the other UEs. By considering the orthog-
onality condition, we have the following:

1. 𝜙rec
j
𝜙ik = 0 ∀ {i = 1, … , 𝜏 , k = 1, … , K } and ∀j = 1, … , L : no intra-cell interferences.
2. 𝜙j 𝜙l = 𝛿j,l : no inter-RPS interferences.
rec rec

3. 𝜙k 𝜙nk� = 𝛿k,k� 𝛿p,n : no intra-cell interferences.

p

Therefore, the orthogonality condition can be expressed as:

⎛𝜙rec
j
𝜙21 𝜙31 … 𝜙𝜏+1
1
⎞ ⎛ (𝜙rec
j
)H (𝜙12 )H … (𝜙1K )H ⎞
⎜ 𝜙1 𝜙rec 𝜙32 𝜏+1 ⎟ ⎜
… 𝜙2 ⎟ ⎜ (𝜙1 ) 2 H
(𝜙rec )H … (𝜙2K )H ⎟⎟
𝛷l 𝛷jH = ⎜ 2 j j
⎜ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⎟⎜ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⎟
⎜ 𝜙1 𝜙2 … 𝜙𝜏K 𝜙rec ⎟ ⎜(𝜙𝜏+1 )H (𝜙𝜏+1 )H … (𝜙rec )H ⎟⎠
⎝ K K j ⎠⎝ 1 2 j

⎛𝜏 + 𝛿j,l , 0 … … 0 0⎞
⎜ 0, ⎟ (23)
𝜏 + 𝛿j,l ,
⎜ ⎟
=⎜ 0 0 𝜏 + 𝛿j,l , 0 … ⋮ ⎟
⎜ ⋮ ⋮ 0 … 0 ⎟
⎜ 0, , 0 … 0 𝜏 + 𝛿j,l ⎟⎠
⎝
= (𝜏 + 𝛿j,l )IK

The Proof of (12)

In order to estimate the channels, the UEs uplink their PSs, therefore, the
BS of jth cell correlates its received pilot signal (11) with its local PSs
𝛷j = [(𝜓1 )T , (𝜓2 )T, … , (𝜓K )T]T ∈ CK×(𝜏+1) . Thus, the estimated CSI can be expressed as:
j j j

13
 M. Boulouird et al.

Yj 𝛷jH
̂
Hj,j = √
𝜌p
rec 2
𝜙31 … 𝜙𝜏+1 ⎛ (𝜙rec )H (𝜙12 )H … (𝜙1K )H ⎞
⎛𝜙l 𝜙1 1 ⎞⎜ j H (24)
� … (𝜙2K )H ⎟⎟ Nj 𝛷j
L
⎜ 𝜙12 𝜙rec 𝜙32 … 𝜙2 𝜏+1 ⎟ (𝜙2 )H
⎜ 1 (𝜙rec )H
= Hj,l ⎜ l
⎟
j + √
⎜ ⋮1 ⋮2 ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⎟⎜ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⎟ 𝜌p
l=1
⎝ 𝜙K 𝜙K ... 𝜙𝜏K 𝜙rec ⎠ ⎜(𝜙𝜏+1 )H (𝜙𝜏+1 )H rec H ⎟
… (𝜙j ) ⎠
l ⎝ 1 2

∑𝜏 ∑𝜏 ∑𝜏
⎛ 𝛼j,j + i=1 𝜙i1,j (𝜙i1,j )H , 𝜙i (𝜙i )H + 𝛼j,j , , … , 𝜙2 (𝜙i )H + 𝛼j,j ⎞
⎜ ∑ ∑ i=1 1,j 2,j ∑𝜏i=1 21,j iK,j H
𝜏
𝜙i (𝜙i )H + 𝛼j,j , 𝜏
𝜙i (𝜙i )H + 𝛼j,j , , … , 𝜙 (𝜙 ) + 𝛼j,j ⎟
⎜ i=1 2,j 1,j i=1 2,j 2,j i=1 2,j K,j ⎟
= Hj,j ⎜ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⎟
⎜ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⎟
⎜∑𝜏 𝜙i (𝜙i )H + 𝛼 , ∑𝜏 𝜙i (𝜙i )H + 𝛼 , , … , ∑𝜏 2 i H ⎟
⎝ i=1 K,j 1,j j,j i=1 K,j 2,j j,j i=1 𝜙K,j (𝜙K,j ) + 𝛼j,j ⎠
(25)
∑𝜏 ∑𝜏 ∑𝜏
⎛ i=1 𝜙i1,l (𝜙i1,j )H + 𝛼l,j , 𝜙i1,l (𝜙i2,j )H + 𝛼l,j , , … , 𝜙2 (𝜙i )H + 𝛼l,j ⎞
⎜ ∑𝜏 ∑𝜏i=1 ∑𝜏i=1 21,l iK,j H
�L
i i H
𝜙 (𝜙 ) + 𝛼l,j , i i H
𝜙 (𝜙 ) + 𝛼l,j , , … , 𝜙 (𝜙 ) + 𝛼l,j ⎟
⎜ i=1 2,l 1,j i=1 2,l 2,j i=1 2,l K,j ⎟
+ Hj,l ⎜ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⎟
l=1,l≠j ⎜ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⎟
∑ ∑
⎜ 𝜏 𝜙i (𝜙i )H + 𝛼 , 𝜏 𝜙i (𝜙i )H + 𝛼 , , … , 𝜏 𝜙2 (𝜙i )H + 𝛼 ⎟ ∑
⎝ i=1 K,l 1,j l,j i=1 K,l 2,j j,j i=1 K,l K,j l,j ⎠

Nj 𝛷jH
+ √
𝜌p
(26)
where 𝛼j,j = 𝜙rec
j
(𝜙rec
j
and 𝛼j,l =
)H 𝜙rec
j
(𝜙rec
= l
)H 𝜙rec
l
(𝜙ik,j )H =0 are considered
∀(j ≠ l) = 1, … , L , ∀i = 1, … , 𝜏 , and ∀k = 1, … , K .
Therefore, the estimated CSI is then expressed as:

⎛𝜏 + 1, 0 … … 0 0 ⎞
⎜ 0, 𝜏 + 1, ⎟
Ĥ j,j = Hj,j ⎜ 0 0 𝜏 + 1, 0 … ⋮ ⎟
⎜ ⎟
⎜ ⋮ ⋮ 0 … 0 ⎟
⎝ 0, , 0 … 0 𝜏 + 1⎠
⎛𝜏 + 0, 0 … … 0 0 ⎞
� L ⎜ 0, 𝜏 + 0, ⎟ Nj 𝛷H (27)
Hj,l ⎜ 0 0 … ⋮ ⎟+ √
j
+ 0 𝜏 + 0,
⎜ ⎟ 𝜌p
l=1,l≠j
⎜ ⋮ ⋮ 0 … 0 ⎟
⎝ 0, , 0 … 0 𝜏 +0 ⎠
�
L Nj 𝛷jH
= Hj,j (𝜏 + 1)IK,K + Hj,l 𝜏IK,K + √
l=1,l≠j 𝜌p

Therefore, the estimated CSI at the BS of jth cell is:

�
L Nj 𝛷jH
Ĥ j,j = (𝜏 + 1)Hj,j + 𝜏 Hj,l + √ (28)
l=1,l≠j 𝜌p

13
Encryption Based Strategy to Overcome the Problem of Pilot…

Declarations

Conflict of interest The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Publisher’s Note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and
institutional affiliations.

Mohamed Boulouird received the Bachelor’s degree in Electronics

and Signal Processing from Ibn Zoh University of Agadir, Morocco, in
1999. He received the M.S. degree in Signal Processing and the Ph.D.
degree in Signal Processing for COMmunications (SPCom) from Cadi
Ayyad University of Marrakech, Morocco, in 2001 and 2007, respec-
tively. He joined National School of Applied Sciences of Marrakech
(ENSA-M), Cadi Ayyad University, Morocco, in 2009 and is currently
Assistant Professor. His main research interests include: 5G Wireless
Communications, Massive MIMO Systems, Channel Estimation, Pilot
Contamination, Identification of linear Systems and Equalization.

Abdelfettah Belhabib received the B. S. degree in physics and M. S.

degree in control, industrial computing, signals and systems from Cadi
Ayyad University (UCA), Marrakesh, Morocco, in 2015 and 2018
respectively. He is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree in UCA. His
research interests include Massive MIMO effects on wireless multi
Cellular systems and 5G communications, with a current focus on the
pilot contamination issue. He is a recipient of the International confer-
ence on Advanced communication systems and information security
(ACOSIS) best paper award in 2019.

13
Encryption Based Strategy to Overcome the Problem of Pilot…

Abdelhamid Riadi was born in Ouarzazate, Morocco in 1991. He

received the License degree of Electronics Industrial Computing and
the Master’s degree of Industrial Computer Control Signals and Sys-
tem, from Cadi Ayyad University Marrakech, Morocco in 2013 and
2015 respectively. His main research interests are: Massive-MIMO,
Channel Estimation, Detection and the OFDM technical in the 5G
wireless communications system.

13
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