Massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) is considered to be an emerging technique in wireless communication systems, as it offers the ability to boost channel capacity and spectral efficiency. However, a massive MIMO system requires huge base station (BS) antennas to handle users and suffers from inter-cell interference that leads to pilot contamination. To cope with this, time-shifted pilots are devised for avoiding interference between cells, by rearranging the order of transmitting pilots in different cells. In this paper, an adaptive-elephant-based spider monkey optimization (adaptive ESMO) mechanism is employed for time-shifted optimal pilot scheduling in a massive MIMO system. Here, user grouping is performed with the sparse fuzzy c-means (Sparse FCM) algorithm, grouping users based on such parameters as large-scale fading factor, SINR, and user distance. Here, the user grouping approach prevents inappropriate grouping of users, thus enabling effective grouping, even under the worst conditions in which the channel operates. Finally, optimal time-shifted scheduling of the pilot is performed using the proposed adaptive ESMO concept designed by incorporating adaptive tuning parameters. The efficiency of the adaptive ESMO approach is evaluated and reveals superior performance with the highest achievable uplink rate of 43.084 bps/Hz, the highest SINR of 132.9 dB, and maximum throughput of 2.633 Mbps
Time-shifted Pilot-based Scheduling with Adaptive Optimization for Pilot Contamination Reduction in Massive MIMO