  To guarantee the success of massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO),
one of the main challenges to solve is the efficient management of pilot
contamination. Allocation of fully orthogonal pilot sequences across the
network would provide a solution to the problem, but the associated overhead
would make this approach infeasible in practical systems. Ongoing
fifth-generation (5G) standardisation activities are debating the amount of
resources to be dedicated to the transmission of pilot sequences, focussing on
uplink sounding reference signals (UL SRSs) design. In this paper, we
extensively evaluate the performance of various UL SRS allocation strategies in
practical deployments, shedding light on their strengths and weaknesses.
Furthermore, we introduce a novel UL SRS fractional reuse (FR) scheme, denoted
neighbour-aware FR (FR-NA). The proposed FR-NA generalizes the fixed reuse
paradigm, and entails a tradeoff between i) aggressively sharing some UL SRS
resources, and ii) protecting other UL SRS resources with the aim of relieving
neighbouring BSs from pilot contamination. Said features result in a cell
throughput improvement over both fixed reuse and state-of-the-art FR based on a
cell-centric perspective.
