Kislal, A. OguzLancho Serrano, AlejandroGiuseppe, DurisiStröm, Erik G.2023-09-182023-09-182023-07Kislal, A. O., Lancho, A., Durisi, G., & Ström, E. G. (2023). Efficient evaluation of the error probability for pilot-assisted URLLC with massive MIMO. IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, 41(7), 1969-1981.0733-8716https://hdl.handle.net/10016/38368An earlier version of this paper was presented in part at the Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems, and Computers, Pacific Grove, CA, USA, November 2022.We propose a numerically efficient method for evaluating the random-coding union bound with parameter s on the error probability achievable in the finite-blocklength regime by a pilot-assisted transmission scheme employing Gaussian codebooks and operating over a memoryless block-fading channel. Our method relies on the saddlepoint approximation, which, differently from previous results reported for similar scenarios, is performed with respect to the number of fading blocks (a.k.a. diversity branches) spanned by each codeword, instead of the number of channel uses per block. This different approach avoids a costly numerical averaging of the error probability over the realizations of the fading process and of its pilot-based estimate at the receiver and results in a significant reduction of the number of channel realizations required to estimate the error probability accurately. Our numerical experiments for both single-antenna communication links and massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) networks show that, when two or more diversity branches are available, the error probability can be estimated accurately with the saddlepoint approximation with respect to the number of fading blocks using a numerical method that requires about two orders of magnitude fewer Monte-Carlo samples than with the saddlepoint approximation with respect to the number of channel uses per block.13eng© 2023 IEEE.Pilot-assisted transmissionFinite-blocklength information theorySaddlepoint approximationUltra-reliable low-latency communicationMassive MIMO systemresearch articleElectrónicaTelecomunicacioneshttps://doi.org/10.1109/JSAC.2023.3280972open access196971981IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications41AR/0000033309