Low-Complexity Blind Estimator of SNR and MSE for mmWave Multi-Antenna Communications

Abstract

To enhance the robustness and resilience of wireless communication and meet performance requirements, various environment-reflecting metrics, such as the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), are utilized as the system parameter. To obtain these metrics, training signals such as pilot sequences are generally employed. However, the rapid fluctuations of the millimeter-wave (mmWave) propagation channel often degrade the accuracy of such estimations. To address this challenge, various blind estimators that operate without pilot have been considered as potential solutions. However, these algorithms often involve a training phase for machine learning or a large number of iterations, which implies prohibitive computational complexity, making them difficult to employ for real-time services and the system less resilient to dynamic environment variation. In this paper, we propose blind estimators for average noise power, signal power, SNR, and mean-square error (MSE) that do not require knowledge of the ground-truth signal or involve high computational complexity. The proposed algorithm leverages the inherent sparsity of mmWave channel in beamspace domain, which makes the signal and noise power components more distinguishable.