Beam Structured Signal Detection for HF Skywave Massive MIMO 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 model (BBCM) in the space domain and reveal the sparsity of the channel in the space-beam domain. 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 to 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 provide a beam selection criterion to choose the beams that are used for the BSD. Simulation results demonstrate the low complexity and satisfactory performance of the proposed detector.