Channel Estimation in OFDM systems

Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) provides an effective and low complexity means of eliminating intersymbol interference for transmission over frequency selective fading channels. This technique has received a lot of interest in mobile communication research as the radio channel is usually frequency selective and time variant. In OFDM system, modulation may be coherent or differential. Channel state information (CSI) is required for the OFDM receiver to perform coherent detection or diversity combining, if multiple transmit and receive antennas are deployed. In practice, CSI can be reliably estimated at the receiver by transmitting pilots along with data symbols. Pilot symbol assisted channel estimation is especially attractive for wireless links, where the channel is time-varying. When using differential modulation there is no need for a channel estimate but its performance is inferior to coherent system.In this thesis we investigate and compare various efficient pilot based channel estimation schemes for OFDM systems. The channel estimation can be performed by either inserting pilot tones into all subcarriers of OFDM symbols with a specific period or inserting pilot tones into each OFDM symbol. In this present study, two major types of pilot arrangement such as blocktype and comb-type pilot have been focused employing Least Square Error (LSE) and Minimum Mean Square Error (MMSE) channel estimators. Block type pilot sub-carriers is especially suitable for slow-fading radio channels whereas comb type pilots provide better resistance to fast fading channels. Also comb type pilot arrangement is sensitive to frequency selectivity when comparing to block type arrangement. The channel estimation algorithm based on comb type pilots is divided into pilot signal estimation and channel interpolation. The pilot signal estimation is based on LSE and MMSE criteria, together with channel interpolation using linear interpolation and spline cubic interpolation. The symbol error rate (SER) performances of OFDM system for both block type and comb type pilot subcarriers are presented in the thesis

LPTV-Aware Bit Loading and Channel Estimation in Broadband PLC for Smart Grid

Power line communication (PLC) has received steady interest over recent decades because of its economic use of existing power lines, and is one of the communication technologies envisaged for Smart Grid (SG) infrastructure. However, power lines are not designed for data communication, and this brings unique challenges for data communication over power lines. In particular for broadband (BB) PLC, the channel exhibits linear periodically time varying (LPTV) behavior synchronous to the AC mains cycle. This is due to the time varying impedances of electrical devices that are connected to the power grid. Another challenge is the impulsive noise in addition to power line background noise, which is due to switching events in the power line network. In this work, we focus on two major aspects of an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) system for BB PLC LPTV channels; bit and power allocation, and channel estimation (CE). First, we investigate the problem of optimal bit and power allocation, in order to increase bit rates and improve energy efficiency. We present that the application of a power constraint that is averaged over many microslots can be exploited for further performance improvements through bit loading. Due to the matroid structure of the optimization problem, greedy-type algorithms are proven to be optimal for the new LPTV-aware bit and power loading. Significant gains are attained especially for poor (i.e. high attenuation) channel conditions, and at reduced transmit-power levels, where the energy per bit-transmission is also low. Next, two mechanisms are utilized to reduce the complexity of the optimal LPTV-aware bit loading and peak microslot power levels: (i) employing representative values from microslot transfer functions, and (ii) power clipping. The ideas of LPTV-aware bit loading, complexity reduction mechanism, and power clipping are also applicable to non-optimal bit loading schemes. We apply these ideas to two additional sub-optimal bit loading algorithms that are based on even-like power distribution for a portion of the available spectrum, and demonstrate that similar gains in bit rates are achieved. Second, we tackle the problem of CE for BB PLC LPTV channels. We first investigate pilot based CE with different pilot geometry in order to reduce interpolation error. Block-type, comb-type, and incline type pilot arrangements are considered and a performance comparison has been made. Next we develop a robust CE scheme with low overhead that addresses the drawbacks of block-type pilot arrangement and decision directed CE schemes such as large estimation overhead for block-type pilot geometry, and difficulty in channel tracking in the case of sudden changes in the channel for decision directed approaches. In order to overcome these drawbacks, we develop a transform domain (TD) analysis approach to determine the cause of changes in the channel estimates, which are due to changes in the channel response or the presence of impulsive noise. We then propose a robust CE scheme with low estimation overhead, which utilizes pilot symbols placed widely apart and exploits the information obtained from TD analysis as a basis for switching between various CE schemes. The overhead of the proposed scheme for CE is low, and sudden changes in the channel are tracked affectively. Therefore, the effects of the LPTV channel and the impulsive noise on CE are mitigated. Our results indicate that for bit and power allocation, the proposed reduced complexity LPTV-aware bit loading with power clipping algorithm performs very close to the optimal LPTV-aware bit loading, and is an attractive solution to bit loading in a practical setting. Finally, for the CE problem, the proposed CE scheme based on TD analysis has low estimation overhead, performs well compared to block-type pilot arrangement and decision directed CE schemes, and is robust to changes in the channel and the presence of impulsive noise. Therefore, it is a good alternative for CE in BB PLC

Channel Estimation for MIMO MC-CDMA Systems

The concepts of MIMO MC-CDMA are not new but the new technologies to improve their functioning are an emerging area of research. In general, most mobile communication systems transmit bits of information in the radio space to the receiver. The radio channels in mobile radio systems are usually multipath fading channels, which cause inter-symbol interference (ISI) in the received signal. To remove ISI from the signal, there is a need of strong equalizer. In this thesis we have focused on simulating the MIMO MC-CDMA systems in MATLAB and designed the channel estimation for them

A Study on Efficient Receiver Design for UWA Communication System

Underwater Acoustic Channels are fast varying channel according to environmental conditions and exhibit strong random fluctuations in amplitude as well as phase due to reflection, refraction, and diffraction. Due to these highly space, time and frequency dependent channel characteristics, it is very difficult to establish reliable and long-range underwater acoustic communication. In this project, channel modeling has been done showing the different channel characteristics of underwater and their dependencies on frequency, temperature, pressure, salinity etc. Also, it has been shown through some theoretical and practical results that the nakagami fading is the best suitable generalized fading to be used in underwater. In this research work various techniques such as equalization, pilot based OFDM and LDPC Coding has also been done to mitigate the channel fading effect and to improve the performance. An adaptive equalizer has been implemented through three different algorithms LMS, NLMS and RLS for linear as well as non-linear channels to mitigate ISI and, their convergence characteristics along with bit error rate performance has been compared. Two types of pilot insertion, block and Comb type has also been done while implementing OFDM. Block type pilot based OFDM is suitable for slow fading and comb type pilot based OFDM is suitable for a fast fading channel. As in underwater, both types of fading exist, hence, lattice type pilot based OFDM is the best suitable for underwater acoustic communication. LDPC channel coding through which almost Shannon capacity performance can be achieved; has also been implemented taking nakagami channel fading. Bit error rate performance has been compared for different LDPC decoding techniques and for different code rate

Channel Estimation in Multicarrier Communication Systems

The data rate and spectrum efficiency of wireless mobile communications have been significantly improved over the last decade or so. Recently, the advanced systems such as 3GPP LTE and terrestrial digital TV broadcasting have been sophisticatedly developed using OFDM and CDMA technology. In general, most mobile communication systems transmit bits of information in the radio space to the receiver. The radio channels in mobile radio systems are usually multipath fading channels, which cause inter-symbol interference (ISI) in the received signal. To remove ISI from the signal, there is a need of strong equalizer which requires knowledge on the channel impulse response (CIR).This is primarily provided by a separate channel estimator. Usually the channel estimation is based on the known sequence of bits, which is unique for a certain transmitter and which is repeated in every transmission burst. Thus, the channel estimator is able to estimate CIR for each burst separately by exploiting the known transmitted bits and the corresponding received samples. In this thesis we investigate and compare various efficient channel estimation schemes for OFDM systems which can also be extended to MC DS-CDMA systems.The channel estimation can be performed by either inserting pilot tones into all subcarriers of OFDM symbols with a specific period or inserting pilot tones into each OFDM symbol. Two major types of pilot arrangement such as block type and comb type pilot have been focused employing Least Square Error (LSE) and Minimum Mean Square Error (MMSE) channel estimators. Block type pilot sub-carriers is especially suitable for slow-fading radio channels whereas comb type pilots provide better resistance to fast fading channels. Also comb type pilot arrangement is sensitive to frequency selectivity when comparing to block type arrangement. However, there is another supervised technique called Implicit Training (IT) based channel estimation which exploits the first order statistics in the received data, induced by superimposing periodic training sequences with good correlation properties, along with the information symbols. Hence, the need for additional time slots for training the equalizer is avoided. The performance of the estimators is presented in terms of the mean square estimation error (MSEE) and bit error rate (BER)

Performance evaluation of high mobility OFDM channel estimation techniques

In wireless communication, Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) has been adopted due to its robustness to multipath fading and high data rate transmissions. At the other hand, the performance of OFDM systems severely degraded due to multi-path fading and Doppler frequency shifts in mobile systems, which causes inter-carrier-interference (ICI). Thus, Estimation of channel parameters is required at the receiver using a pre designed estimator where pilot tones are inserted in each OFDM symbol. In this paper, a random pilot data are generated and inserted in each OFDM symbol at equally spaced locations. The performance test of Least Square (LS) and Linear Minimum Mean Square (LMMSE) estimation methods are proposed with Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) based on both LS and LMMSE, where different ITU channel models are considered in order to compare their performance for data transmission in high mobile systems with different Doppler frequencies exceeds 200 Hz and minimal number of pilots