KSII TRANSACTIONS ON INTERNET AND INFORMATION SYSTEMS VOL. 13, NO. 9, Sep. 2019 4390 Copyright ⓒ 2019 KSII Time Shifted Pilot Signal Transmission With Pilot Hopping To Improve The Uplink Performance of Massive MIMO System For Next Generation Network Amrita Ruperee 1* , and Shikha Nema 2 1 Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, S.N.D.T. University, Mumbai-400015 - INDIA [e-mail: amritaruperee@gmail.com] 2 Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, S.N.D.T. University, Mumbai-400015 - INDIA [e-mail: shikhanema@gmail.com] *Corresponding author: Amrita Ruperee Received January 25, 2019; revised March 12, 2019; accepted April 7, 2019; published September 30, 2019 Abstract The paucity of pilot signals in Massive MIMO system is a vital issue. To accommodate substantial number of users, pilot signals are reused. This leads to interference, resulting in pilot contamination and degrades channel estimation at the Base Station (BS). Hence, mitigation of pilot contamination is exigency in Massive MIMO system. The proposed Time Shifted Pilot Signal Transmission with Pilot signal Hopping (TSPTPH), addresses the pilot contamination issue by transmitting pilot signals in non-overlapping time interval with hopping of pilot signals in each transmission slot. Hopping is carried by switching user to new a pilot signal in each transmission slot, resulting in random change of interfering users. This contributes to the change in channel coefficient, which leads to improved channel estimation at the BS and therefore enhances the efficiency of Massive MIMO system. In this system, Uplink Signal Power to Interference plus Noise Power Ratio (SINR) and data-rate are calculated for pilot signal reuse factor 1 and 3, by estimating the channel with Least Square estimation. The proposed system also reduces the uplink Signal power for data transmission of each User Equipment for normalized spectral efficiency with rising number of antennas at the BS and thus improves battery life. Keywords: Channel estimation, Hopping, Pilot contamination, Pilot signal, Signal Power to Interference plus Noise Power Ratio. http://doi.org/10.3837/tiis.2019.09.004 ISSN : 1976-7277