Analysis and Design of Channel Estimation in Multicell Multiuser MIMO OFDM Systems

This paper investigates the uplink transmission in multicell multiuser multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) systems. The system model considers imperfect channel estimation, pilot contamination (PC), and multicarrier and multipath channels. Analytical expressions are first presented on the mean square error (MSE) of two classical channel estimation algorithms [i.e., least squares (LS) and minimum mean square error (MMSE)] in the presence of PC. Then, a simple H-infinity (H-inf) channel estimation approach is proposed to have good suppression to PC. This approach exploits the space-alternating generalized expectation–maximization (SAGE) iterative process to decompose the multicell multiuser MIMO (MU-MIMO) problem into a series of single-cell single-user single-input single-output (SISO) problems, which reduces the complexity significantly. According to the analytic results given herein, increasing the number of pilot subcarriers cannot mitigate PC, and a clue for suppressing PC is obtained. It is shown from the results that the H-inf has better suppression capability to PC than classical estimation algorithms. Its performance is close to that of the optimal MMSE as the length of channel impulse response (CIR) is increased. By using the SAGE process, the performance of the H-inf does not degrade when the number of antennas is large at the base station (BS)

Automatic Identification of Space-Time Block Coding for MIMO-OFDM Systems in the Presence of Impulsive Interference

Signal identification, a vital task of intelligent communication radios, finds its applications in various military and civil communication systems. Previous works on identification for space-time block codes (STBC) of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system employing orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) are limited to additive white Gaussian noise. In this paper, we develop a novel automatic identification algorithm to exploit the generalized cross-correntropy function of the received signals to classify STBC-OFDM signals in the presence of Gaussian noise and impulsive interference. This algorithm first introduces the generalized cross-correntropy function to fully utilize the space-time redundancy of STBC-OFDM signals. The strongly-distinguishable discriminating matrix is then constructed by using the generalized cross-correntropy for multiple receive antennas. Finally, a decision tree identification algorithm is employed to identify the STBC-OFDM signals which is extended by the binary hypothesis test. The proposed algorithm avoids the traditionally required pre-processing tasks, such as channel coefficient estimation, noise and interference statistics prediction and modulation type recognition. Numerical results are presented to show that the proposed scheme provides good identification performance by exploiting the generalized cross-correntropy function of STBC-OFDM signals under impulsive interference circumstances

Semiblind Channel Estimation and Data Detection for OFDM Systems With Optimal Pilot Design

This paper considers semiblind channel estimation and data detection for orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) over frequency-selective fading channels. We show that the samples of an OFDM symbol are jointly complex Gaussian distributed, where the mean and covariance are determined by the locations and values of fixed pilot symbols. We exploit this distribution to derive a novel maximum-likelihood (ML) semiblind gradient-descent channel estimator. By exploiting the channel impulse response (CIR) statistics, we also derive a semiblind data detector for both Rayleigh and Ricean fading channels. Furthermore, we develop an enhanced data detector, which uses the estimator error statistics to mitigate the effect of channel estimation errors. Efficient implementation of both the semiblind and the improved data detectors is provided via sphere decoding and nulling-canceling detection. We also derive the Cramér-Rao bound (CRB) and design optimal pilots by minimizing the CRB. Our proposed channel estimator and data detector exhibit high bandwidth efficiency (requiring only a few pilot symbols), achieve the CRB, and also nearly reach the performance of an ideal reference receiver