The invention provides a small-scale 
fading channel 
estimation method orientated to a large-scale array antenna 
MIMO communication 
system. In the method, firstly, large-scale 
fading estimation values from user terminals of all adjacent regions to a target 
cell base station are sorted from small to large, and strong interference users of the adjacent regions are selected according to channel 
estimation residue 
processing ability of the target 
cell base station; on the basis, a multi-
cell large-scale 
fading matrix and a multi-
cell system matrix are built, joint channel estimation is conducted on 
pilot frequency receiving signals separated from the 
base station according to the MMSE criterion, and therefore high-accuracy estimation of an ascending small-scale fading channel from a target cell user to the target cell base 
station is obtained. In addition, periodic 
random allocation is conducted on user ascending 
pilot frequency sequences according to the interference 
randomization principle, and adjacent region interference caused by cross-correlation difference among the 
pilot frequency sequences is reduced. The small-scale fading channel estimation method can effectively increase accuracy of small-scale fading channel estimation of the large-scale 
MIMO system.