Beam Structured Signal Detector for HF Skywave Massive MIMO-OFDM Communications

In this paper, we investigate signal detection for HF skywave massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communications with orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) modulation. We first introduce beam based channel models (BBCM) in the space domain at each subcarrier and in the space-frequency domain for all subcarriers. Based on the BBCM in the space domain, we propose a beam structured detector (BSD) for each subcarrier. Specifically, we prove that the space domain detector design can be transformed into that of a beam domain detector without sacrificing optimality, and the asymptotically optimal space domain detector is beam structured with a low-dimensional beam domain detector, thus significantly reducing the design and implementation complexities. Furthermore, we extend the BSD to the space-frequency domain based on the BBCM jointly for all subcarriers. The design of space-frequency domain detector is also converted to that of a low-dimensional beam domain detector, which enables a very efficient design and implementation of BSD. Simulation results demonstrate the low complexity and satisfactory performance of the proposed detectors.