  This paper addresses the problem of channel estimation in multi-cell
interference-limited cellular networks. We consider systems employing multiple
antennas and are interested in both the finite and large-scale antenna number
regimes (so-called "massive MIMO"). Such systems deal with the multi-cell
interference by way of per-cell beamforming applied at each base station.
Channel estimation in such networks, which is known to be hampered by the pilot
contamination effect, constitute a major bottleneck for overall performance. We
present a novel approach which tackles this problem by enabling a low-rate
coordination between cells during the channel estimation phase itself. The
coordination makes use of the additional second-order statistical information
about the user channels, which are shown to offer a powerful way of
discriminating across interfering users with even strongly correlated pilot
sequences. Importantly, we demonstrate analytically that in the
large-number-of-antennas regime, the pilot contamination effect is made to
vanish completely under certain conditions on the channel covariance. Gains
over the conventional channel estimation framework are confirmed by our
simulations for even small antenna array sizes.
