A novel channel estimation method for OFDM mobile communication systems based on pilot signals and transform-domain processing

Abstract

A method of estimating the channel transfer function is presented for orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) mobile communication systems working under time-variant radio channel conditions. The proposed method employs lowpass filtering in a transform domain so that intercarrier interference and additive white Gaussian noise components in the received pilot signals are significantly reduced. The cutoff frequency of the transform-domain filter is dynamically selected by tracking the received pilot signals. The channel transfer function for all the subcarriers is obtained by a high-resolution interpolation realized by zero-padding and DFT/IDFT. The proposed method is applicable for all linear modulation OFDM systems. It is demonstrated with a 16QAM-OFDM system which includes both amplitude and phase modulations.