In contrast to the classical cyclic prefix (CP)-OFDM, the time domain
synchronous (TDS)-OFDM employs a known pseudo noise (PN) sequence as guard
interval (GI). Conventional channel estimation methods for TDS-OFDM are based
on the exploitation of the PN sequence and consequently suffer from intersymbol
interference (ISI). This paper proposes a novel dataaided channel estimation
method which combines the channel estimates obtained from the PN sequence and,
most importantly, additional channel estimates extracted from OFDM data
symbols. Data-aided channel estimation is carried out using the rebuilt OFDM
data symbols as virtual training sequences. In contrast to the classical turbo
channel estimation, interleaving and decoding functions are not included in the
feedback loop when rebuilding OFDM data symbols thereby reducing the
complexity. Several improved techniques are proposed to refine the data-aided
channel estimates, namely one-dimensional (1-D)/two-dimensional (2-D) moving
average and Wiener filtering. Finally, the MMSE criteria is used to obtain the
best combination results and an iterative process is proposed to progressively
refine the estimation. Both MSE and BER simulations using specifications of the
DTMB system are carried out to prove the effectiveness of the proposed
algorithm even in very harsh channel conditions such as in the single frequency
network (SFN) case
