2508 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 4, NO.

5, SEPTEMBER 2005
Channel Estimation for Adaptive
Frequency-Domain Equalization
Michele Morelli, Member, IEEE, Luca Sanguinetti, Student Member, IEEE, and Umberto Mengali, Life Fellow, IEEE
AbstractFrequency-domain equalization (FDE) is an effec-
tive technique for high-rate wireless communications because of
its reduced complexity compared to conventional time-domain
equalization (TDE). In this paper, we consider adaptive FDE for
single-carrier (SC) systems with explicit channel and noise-power
estimation. The channel response is estimated in the frequency
domain following two different approaches. The rst operates
independently on each frequency bin while the second ex-
ploits the fading correlation across the signal bandwidth. Least-
mean-square (LMS) and recursive-least-square (RLS) algorithms
are employed to update the channel estimates. The noise power
is estimated using a low-complexity algorithm based on ad hoc
reasoning.
Compared to other existing receivers employing adaptive FDE,
the proposed schemes have better error-rate performance and can
be used even in the presence of relatively fast fading.
Index TermsChannel estimation, channel tracking, frequen-
cy-domain equalization (FDE).
I. INTRODUCTION
F
UTURE wireless communication systems are expected to
support high-speed and high-quality multimedia services.
In these applications, the received signal is typically affected
by frequency-selective fading and channel equalization is re-
quired to mitigate the resulting intersymbol interference (ISI)
[1]. The classical approach in single-carrier (SC) systems is
time-domain equalization (TDE) [2]. However, the number of
operations per signaling interval grows linearly with the number
of interfering symbols or, equivalently, with the data rate. As a
result, conventional time-domain equalizers are not suitable for
high-speed transmissions with channel delay spreads extending
over tens of symbol intervals.
A promising alternative to TDE is the frequency-domain
equalization (FDE) [3][6]. Using the fast Fourier transform
(FFT) in conjunction with FDE leads to substantial computa-
tional saving with respect to conventional TDE. Also, adap-
tive algorithms generally converge faster and are more stable
in the frequency domain [4]. Compared to orthogonal fre-
quency division multiplexing (OFDM), SC systems with FDE
(SC-FDE) have similar performance and complexity [5][7],
but the latter are less sensitive to carrier-frequency uncertainties
and nonlinear distortions, thereby allowing the use of low-
Manuscript received November 24, 2003; revised April 14, 2004 and July
28, 2004; accepted August 22, 2004. The editor coordinating the review of this
paper and approving it for publication is H. Li. This work was supported by
the Istituto di Elettronica e di Ingegneria dellInformazione e delle Telecomu-
nicazioni (IEIIT) of the Italian National Research Council (CNR).
The authors are with the Department of Information Engineering, University
of Pisa, I-56126 Pisa, Italy (e-mail: michele.morelli@iet.unipi.it).
Digital Object Identier 10.1109/TWC.2005.853896
cost power ampliers. SC-FDE systems equipped with multiple
receive antennas have been discussed in [3] and [8], while
the possibility of achieving transmit diversity using Alamoutis
spacetime block coding [9] has been explored in [10]. Finally,
novel FDE structures for SC multiple-input multiple-output
(MIMO) systems are investigated in [11].
Mobile communication systems operating over time-varying
fading channels require adaptive signal processing to track
the channel variations at the receiver. Adaptive FDE schemes
based on the minimum mean square error (MMSE) criterion
have been investigated by Clark in [3]. They operate ac-
cording to least-mean-square (LMS) or recursive-least-square
(RLS) adaptation rules and do not require explicit channel
estimation. Compared with their time-domain counterparts,
they have better stability and shorter acquisition times. How-
ever, their performance over fast-fading channels is unsatisfac-
tory when a single receive antenna is employed (i.e., without
space diversity).
In the present paper, we return to the problem discussed by
Clark, but we consider adaptive SC-FDE schemes in which
estimates of the channel response are exploited to compute
the equalizer coefcients according to the MMSE criterion.
The channel response is estimated in the frequency domain
using two different approaches. The rst assumes indepen-
dently faded frequency bins and is referred to as unstructured
channel estimation (UCE). The second is called structured
channel estimation (SCE) and effectively exploits the fading
correlation between adjacent bins. Both schemes exploit train-
ing symbols to get initial channel estimates, whereas LMS or
RLS algorithms are employed to track channel variations. It
is worth noting that in SC-FDE systems, the energy of each
symbol is distributed over the whole signal bandwidth and
pilots cannot be placed on preassigned frequency bins. Ac-
cordingly, channel estimation cannot be accomplished with the
same methods employed in OFDM applications, where pilots
are typically inserted in both time and frequency dimensions,
and channel estimates are obtained by interpolation (see [12]
and [13] and references therein).
As explained later, computing the equalizer coefcients
requires knowledge of the noise power. The latter is estimated
in the frequency domain using a maximum likelihood (ML)
approach. The resulting scheme has good performance but it
is computationally demanding. Therefore, we also consider a
simpler solution based on heuristic arguments.
Simulation results indicate that the proposed SC-FDE
schemes outperform Clarks adaptive detectors (CADs) (es-
pecially in a fast-fading environment) without a signicant
increase in complexity. Diversity combining using multiple
1536-1276/$20.00 2005 IEEE
MORELLI et al.: CHANNEL ESTIMATION FOR ADAPTIVE FREQUENCY-DOMAIN EQUALIZATION 2509
Fig. 1. (a) SC-FDE transmitter. (b) SC-FDE receiver.
receive antennas is also considered. It is shown that this guar-
antees dramatic performance improvements.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. The next
section describes the signal model and introduces basic
notations. In Section III, the concept of FDE with explicit chan-
nel and noise-power estimation is discussed. Several channel-
estimation schemes operating in the frequency domain are
proposed in Section IV, whereas the problem of the noise-
power estimation is addressed in Section V. Simulation results
are discussed in Section VI and some conclusions are offered
in Section VII.
II. SYSTEM MODEL
A. SC-FDE Transmitter
Fig. 1(a) shows the transmitter of the SC-FDE system un-
der investigation. The input symbols, belonging to a phase-
shift keying (PSK) or quadratic-amplitude modulation (QAM)
constellation, are partitioned into adjacent blocks of length N
and each block is preceded by a cyclic prex longer than the
channel impulse response (CIR). The prex serves to eliminate
interblock interference and makes the linear convolution of
the symbols with the channel look like a circular convolution,
which is essential for FFT-based demodulation. We denote
c
m
= [c
m
(0) c
m
(1) c
m
(N 1)]
T
as the mth block of
symbols [the superscript ()
T
means transpose operation] and
assume that {c
m
(n)} are independent and identically distrib-
uted (i.i.d.) with zero mean and unit variance. After insertion of
the N
G
-point cyclic prex, c
m
is fed to a linear modulator with
impulse response g(t) and signaling interval T. The complex
envelope of the transmitted signal is
s(t) =

m=
N1

n=N
G
c
m
(n)g(t nT mT
B
) (1)
where m counts the transmitted blocks, n counts the data
symbols within a block, T
B
= (N +N
G
)T is the duration of
the cyclically extended data block, and c
m
(n) = c
m
(n +N)
for N
G
n 1. We assume that g(t) has a root-raised-
cosine Fourier transform with some roll-off .
B. SC-FDE Receiver
The receiver has P diversity branches and its block dia-
gram is sketched in Fig. 1(b). The complex envelope of the
received waveform at the pth antenna is denoted r
(p)
(t) and is
expressed by
r
(p)
(t) = s
(p)
R
(t) +
(p)
(t) (2)
where s
(p)
R
(t) is the signal component and
(p)
(t) is thermal
noise. The latter is modeled as a circularly symmetric Gaussian
process with two-sided power spectral density 2N
(p)
0
(possi-
bly different from branch to branch). As in [3], we assume
negligible channel variations over a block (slow fading). Then,
denoting h
(p)
m
(t) as the CIR at the pth antenna (encompassing
the transmit lter and the physical channel) during the mth data
block, we have
s
(p)
R
(t) =

m=
N1

n=N
G
c
m
(n)h
(p)
m
(t nT mT
B
). (3)
In order to produce a discrete-time signal, the waveform from
each antenna is fed to a low-pass lter (LPF) and is sampled
at a rate of 2/T to avoid aliasing distortion. For the sake of
simplicity, the LPF is taken with a brick-wall transfer function
of bandwidth 1/T. Note that the rectangular shape is not strictly
necessary and could easily be made more realistic [14]. For
example, we may employ a root-raised-cosine function with a
suitable roll-off such that the signal component is passed undis-
torted and the noise samples at the lter output are uncorrelated.
After carrier-frequency and block-timing synchronization
[not shown in Fig. 1(b)], the cyclic prex is discarded and the
received samples are arranged in blocks of 2N elements. We
denote x
(p)
m
= [x
(p)
m
(0) x
(p)
m
(1) x
(p)
m
(2N 1)]
T
as the mth
block of samples at the pth antenna and assume that h
(p)
m
(t) has
support (0, LT), with L N
G
. Then, the entries of x
(p)
m
are
found to be
x
(p)
m
(k) =
N1

n=1L
c
m
(n)h
(p)
m
(k 2n) +w
(p)
m
(k),
k = 0, 1, . . . , 2N 1 (4)
2510 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 4, NO. 5, SEPTEMBER 2005
Fig. 2. Frequency-domain equalizer/combiner with explicit channel and noise-power estimation.
where h
(p)
m
() is the sample of h
(p)
m
(t) at t = T/2 and w
(p)
m
(k)
is white Gaussian noise with variance
2
(p)
= 4N
(p)
0
/T.
Each block x
(p)
m
(p = 1, 2, . . . , P) is transformed in the fre-
quency domain using a 2N-point discrete Fourier transform
(DFT) unit and the DFT outputs are passed to the channel
equalizer/combiner to form the N-dimensional vector Y
m
=
[Y
m
(0) Y
m
(1) Y
m
(N 1)]
T
(details on the channel
equalizer/combiner are given in the next section). After an
N-point inverse DFT (IDFT), the time-domain samples y
m
=
[y
m
(0) y
m
(1) y
m
(N 1)]
T
are nally fed to a thresh-
old device that delivers the data decisions c
m
= [ c
m
(0)
c
m
(1) c
m
(N 1)]
T
corresponding to the mth block.
C. Channel Model
We consider a multipath channel with N
p
distinct paths
and we assume that the P receive antennas are arranged in a
uniform linear array (ULA) with interelement spacing d. Then,
the baseband impulse response of the system at the pth antenna
takes the form

(p)
(t, ) =
N
p

=1
a

(t)e
j(p1)

(t)
(

(t)) (5)
where (t) is the Dirac delta function,

(t) is the delay of the

th path, a

(t) is the corresponding complex amplitude, and

(t) is dened as

(t) =
2

d sin [

(t)] . (6)
In the above equation, is the free-space wavelength and

(t) is the direction of arrival (DOA) of the th path. In the

following, we assume that the path delays and the DOAs do
not change signicantly with time, i.e., we set

(t)

and

(t)

. Conversely, the path gains are modeled as nar-

rowband, independent, and complex-valued Gaussian processes
with zero mean and average power
2

= E{|a

(t)|
2
}.
The CIR at the pth antenna is the convolution of
(p)
(t, )
with the transmit pulse g(t). Recalling that the gains {a

(t)}
are practically constant over a block, we have
h
(p)
m
(t) =
N
p

=1
a

(mT
B
)e
j(p1)

g(t

). (7)
Note that the length of h
(p)
m
(t) (expressed in symbol intervals)
is L = int{(
max
+T
g
)/T}, where T
g
is the duration of g(t),

max
= max

} is the maximum path delay, and int(x)

denotes the maximum integer not exceeding x. Since
max
is usually unknown, in practice, L is estimated as taking the
maximum expected value of
max
.
III. FREQUENCY-DOMAIN EQUALIZATION (FDE)
Fig. 2 illustrates an FDE scheme with explicit channel and
noise-power estimation. The DFT output at the pth branch is
denoted X
(p)
m
= [X
(p)
m
(0) X
(p)
m
(1) X
(p)
m
(2N 1)]
T
, with
X
(p)
m
(n) =
1

2N
2N1

k=0
x
(p)
m
(k)e

j2nk
(2N)
. (8)
Substituting (4) into (8) and bearing in mind that h
(p)
m
(t) has
duration LT produces
X
(p)
m
(n) = C
m
(n)H
(p)
m
(n) +W
(p)
m
(n) (9)
where H
(p)
m
(n) is the DFT of the channel response
H
(p)
m
(n) =
1

2N
2L1

=0
h
(p)
m
()e

j2n
(2N)
, 0 n 2N 1
(10)
MORELLI et al.: CHANNEL ESTIMATION FOR ADAPTIVE FREQUENCY-DOMAIN EQUALIZATION 2511
while C
m
(n) is dened as
C
m
(n) =
N1

k=0
c
m
(k)e

j2nk
N
, 0 n 2N 1. (11)
Finally, the quantity
W
(p)
m
(n) =
1

2N
2N1

k=0
w
(p)
m
(k)e

j2nk
(2N)
, 0 n 2N1
(12)
is additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) with variance
2
(p)
.
Bearing in mind that g(t) [and hence, h
(p)
m
(t)] is bandlimited to
|f| (1 +)/2T, it is seen that H
(p)
m
(n) is 0 for N

n
2N N

, with N

= 1 + int[N(1 +)/2].
Vector X
(p)
m
is fed to the pth channel equalizer (a bank of
2N complex-valued multipliers {F
(p)
m
(n); 0 n 2N 1})
and is then combined with the other branch outputs to form
Z
m
(n) =
P

p=1
X
(p)
m
(n)F
(p)
m
(n), 0 n 2N 1. (13)
Computing the 2N-point IDFT of Z
m
(n) produces the equal-
ized sequence in the time domain
z
m
(k) =
2N1

n=0
Z
m
(n)e
j2nk
(2N)
, 0 k 2N 1 (14)
from which the decision statistics y
m
= [y
m
(0) y
m
(1)
y
m
(N 1)]
T
are obtained by decimation, i.e., taking y
m
(k) =
z
m
(2k) for k = 0, 1, . . . , N 1. As shown in Fig. 2, this is
tantamount to passing the samples {Z
m
(n)} to an aliasing
operator that produces the quantities [3]
Y
m
(n) = Z
m
(n) +Z
m
(n +N), 0 n N 1 (15)
and computing y
m
as the N-point IDFT of {Y
m
(n)}. This ap-
proach can be explained observing that decimating in the time
domain corresponds to an aliasing operation in the frequency
domain.
The MSE at the input of the decision device is E{|y
m
(k)
c
m
(k)|
2
}, where the expectation is taken over the transmitted
data sequence and additive noise (i.e., the MSE is dened for
a static channel). Assuming i.i.d. data symbols with zero mean
and unit variance, the optimum equalizer coefcients minimiz-
ing the MSE are computed with ordinary manipulations and
read [2]
F
(p)
m
(n) =
N
_
H
(p)
m
(n)

2
(p)
1 +
N
P

=1

H
()
m
(n+iN)

2
()
,
0 n 2N 1; p = 1, 2, . . . , P. (16)
TABLE I
COMPUTATIONAL COMPLEXITY PER DETECTED SYMBOL
Note that the denominator in (16) is independent of p so that
the equalizer coefcients are proportional to [H
(p)
m
(n)]

/
2
(p)
.
Therefore, from (13), it is seen that Z
m
(n) is a maximum ratio
combination of {X
(p)
m
(n); p = 1, 2, . . . , P}.
From (16), we see that computing F
(p)
m
(n) requires knowl-
edge of the channel response and the noise power at each
branch. In practice, these quantities are unknown. A way out
is discussed in [3], where the equalizer coefcients are updated
in the frequency domain using LMS or RLS algorithms without
explicit channel and noise-power estimation. As indicated in
Fig. 2, here, we propose an alternative approach in which the
estimates of
2
(p)
and H
(p)
m
(n), say
2
(p)
and

H
(p)
m
(n), are em-
ployed in (16) to approximate the equalizer coefcients. Some
methods to compute
2
(p)
and

H
(p)
m
(n) are discussed in the
next section.
The computational load of the FDE is assessed as follows.
The DFT operator in (8) needs N log
2
(2N) complex products
and 2N log
2
(2N) complex additions for each diversity branch.
Also, a total of 2NP complex multiplications and 2NP N
complex additions are involved in the computation of Z
m
(n)
and Y
m
(n) in (13) and (15), respectively. The IDFT of {Y
m
(n)}
needs (N/2) log
2
(N) complex products and N log
2
(N) com-
plex additions. Finally, computing the equalizer coefcients
in (16) requires 5NP real products and 4NP real additions.
The overall operations per detected symbol are summarized
in the rst line of Table I. In writing these gures, we have
borne in mind that a complex product amounts to four real
products plus two real additions, while a complex addition is
equivalent to two real additions. The results of Table I indicate
that the computational load involved in the FDE is proportional
to P log
2
N. For comparison, we recall that the complexity of
a time-domain equalizer with P diversity branches is on the
order of PL [3]. Since in typical applications the block length
N is about 5L (corresponding to an overhead of 20%), we see
that in highly dispersive channels (where large values of L are
expected), FDE may achieve signicant computational savings
with respect to TDE.
IV. CHANNEL ESTIMATION
We begin by rewriting (9) in matrix form
X
(p)
m
= C
m
H
(p)
m
+W
(p)
m
(17)
2512 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 4, NO. 5, SEPTEMBER 2005
where H
(p)
m
= [H
(p)
m
(0) H
(p)
m
(1) H
(p)
m
(2N 1)]
T
, C
m
is
a diagonal matrix
C
m
= diag { C
m
(0) C
m
(1) C
m
(2N 1) } (18)
and W
(p)
m
= [W
(p)
m
(0) W
(p)
m
(1) W
(p)
m
(2N 1)]
T
is a
Gaussian vector with zero mean and covariance matrix C
(p)
W
=

2
(p)
I
2N
(I
2N
is the identity matrix of order 2N). From (10),
we see that H
(p)
m
can also be written as
H
(p)
m
= Fh
(p)
m
(19)
where h
(p)
m
= [h
(p)
m
(0) h
(p)
m
(1) h
(p)
m
(2L 1)]
T
is the CIR
vector at the pth antenna and F is a 2N 2L matrix with
entries
[F]
n,
=
1

2N
e

j2n
(2N)
, 0n 2N1; 0 2L1.
(20)
In the following, we discuss two iterative schemes for esti-
mating the channel frequency response at each diversity branch.
The rst, termed UCE, is based on model (17) and considers
the entries of H
(p)
m
as unknown independent parameters. The
second takes advantage of the correlation between adjacent
frequency bins and effectively exploits the structure of H
(p)
m
shown in (19). For this reason, it is called the SCE. As we shall
see, both UCE and SCE require knowledge of the transmitted
data symbols. To this end, we assume that the data blocks
are organized in frames, and each frame is preceded by some
training blocks. During the data section of the frame, the
channel estimators are switched to a decision-directed mode
and the transmitted symbols are replaced by data decisions.
A. LMS Unstructured Channel Estimation (LMS-UCE)
LMS-UCE employs the LMS algorithm to minimize the cost
function
J
LMS-UCE
_

H
(p)
m
_
= E
_
_
_
_X
(p)
m
C
m

H
(p)
m
_
_
_
2
_
,
p = 1, 2, . . . , P (21)
with respect to

H
(p)
m
( denotes Euclidean norm). This
produces

H
(p)
m+1
=

H
(p)
m
+e
(p)
m
, p = 1, 2, . . . , P (22)
where

H
(p)
m
is the estimate of H
(p)
m
, is the step size, and e
(p)
m
is given by
e
(p)
m
= C
H
m
_
X
(p)
m
C
m

H
(p)
m
_
(23)
with ()
H
denoting Hermitian transpose.
The performance of LMS-UCE over a static channel (i.e.,
H
(p)
m
= H
(p)
) is assessed in Appendix A, assuming i.i.d. data
symbols with zero mean and unit variance. It turns out that

H
(p)
m
is unbiased and has the following mean square estimation
error (MSEE)
E
_
_
_
_

H
(p)
m
H
(p)
_
_
_
2
_
= 4
2
(p)
B
L
T
B
(24)
where B
L
T
B
= N/[2(2 N)] is the noise equivalent band-
width [15, p. 126] of the recursion (22), normalized to 1/T
B
.
The complexity of LMS-UCE is assessed as follows. In the
decision-directed mode, the entries of C
m
are computed from
c
m
through an N-point FFT involving (N/2) log
2
N complex
products and N log
2
N complex additions. Also, evaluating
C
H
m
C
m

H
(p)
m
in the right-hand side (RHS) of (23) needs 6N
real products plus N real additions. Completing the compu-
tation of e
(p)
m
requires 2N complex products and additions.
Finally, updating the channel estimates in the RHS of (22) needs
2N complex additions. The overall operations per detected
symbol are summarized in the second line of Table I.
B. RLS Unstructured Channel Estimation (RLS-UCE)
The RLS-UCE aims at minimizing the exponentially
weighted sum
J
RLS-UCE
_

H
(p)
_
=
m

i=0

mi
_
_
_X
(p)
i
C
i

H
(p)
_
_
_
2
,
p = 1, 2, . . . , P (25)
where 0 < < 1 is the forgetting factor. The minimum is
achieved for

H
(p)
=

H
(p)
m
, with

H
(p)
m
satisfying the recursive
equation

H
(p)
m+1
=

H
(p)
m
+K
m
e
(p)
m
, p = 1, 2, . . . , P (26)
where e
(p)
m
is dened in (23) and K
m
=
diag{K
m
(0) K
m
(1) K
m
(2N 1)}. The term K
m
(n)
is the Kalman gain over the nth frequency bin and it is
expressed by
K
m
(n) =
S
m
(n)
+|C
m
(n)|
2
S
m
(n)
, 0 n 2N 1 (27)
with S
m
(n) satisfying the recursion
S
m+1
(n) =
1

S
m
(n)
_
1 K
m
(n) |C
m
(n)|
2
_
,
0 n 2N 1. (28)
Note that K
m
(n) and S
m
(n) do not depend on the index p,
which means that they are the same at each antenna.
The overall operations required by RLS-UCE per detected
symbol are shown in the third line of Table I. In writing this
gures, we have taken into account that K
m
(n) and S
m
(n)
are real quantities that need to be computed only for 0 n
N 1. This is a consequence of the identities K
m
(n +N) =
K
m
(n) and S
m
(n +N) = S
m
(n), which are easily derived
from (11), (27), and (28).
MORELLI et al.: CHANNEL ESTIMATION FOR ADAPTIVE FREQUENCY-DOMAIN EQUALIZATION 2513
C. LMS Structured Channel Estimation (LMS-SCE)
LMS-SCE aims at estimating h
(p)
m
by looking for the
minimum of
J
LMS-SCE
_

h
(p)
m
_
= E
_
_
_
_X
(p)
m
C
m
F

h
(p)
m
_
_
_
2
_
,
p = 1, 2, . . . , P (29)
with respect to

h
(p)
m
. This leads to the recursion

h
(p)
m+1
=

h
(p)
m
+F
H
e
(p)
m
, p = 1, 2, . . . , P (30)
where e
(p)
m
is dened in (23) and

h
(p)
m
is the CIR estimate at the
mth step. Premultiplying both sides of (30) by F and bearing
in mind (19) produces

H
(p)
m+1
=

H
(p)
m
+FF
H
e
(p)
m
, p = 1, 2, . . . , P. (31)
Following the same arguments as in Appendix A, it can be
shown that LMS-SCE is unbiased and its MSEE is given by
E
_
_
_
_

H
(p)
m
H
(p)
_
_
_
2
_
=
4L
2
(p)
B
L
T
B
N
. (32)
Note that the only difference between LMS-SCE and LMS-
UCE is the presence of the matrix FF
H
in (31), which per-
forms a better noise ltering by taking into account that h
(p)
m
has
the duration L < N. This leads to a reduction of the MSEE by
a factor N/L, as seen by comparing (32) with (24). For L = N,
LMS-SCE boils down to LMS-UCE since, in this case, we have
FF
H
= I
2N
.
The third line in Table I shows the overall operations involved
in LMS-SCE. In writing this line, we have borne in mind that
FF
H
e
(p)
m
is efciently computed by feeding e
(p)
m
to a 2N-point
IDFT unit, setting to 0 the last 2N 2L outputs, and nally
passing the resulting vector to a 2N-point DFT.
D. RLS Structured Channel Estimation (RLS-SCE)
In this case, we look for the minimum of
J
RLS-SCE
_

h
(p)
_
=
m

i=0

mi
_
_
_X
(p)
i
C
i
F

h
(p)
_
_
_
2
,
p = 1, 2, . . . , P (33)
with respect to

h
(p)
. As shown in Appendix B, this leads to the
recursion

h
(p)
m+1
=

h
(p)
m
+R
1
m
F
H
e
(p)
m
, p = 1, 2, . . . , P (34)
where e
(p)
m
is still given in (23) and R
m
C
2L2L
is
dened as
R
m
=
m

i=0

mi
F
H
C
H
i
C
i
F. (35)
Bearing in mind that

H
(p)
m
= F

h
(p)
m
, from (34), we get

H
(p)
m+1
=

H
(p)
m
+FR
1
m
F
H
e
(p)
m
, p = 1, 2, . . . , P. (36)
Note that, although R
m
can be computed recursively as
R
m
= R
m1
+F
H
C
H
m
C
m
F (37)
there seems to be no recursive way to compute R
1
m
in (36).
This makes RLS-SCE prohibitively complex and, for this rea-
son, it is not considered in the sequel.
V. NOISE-POWER ESTIMATION
We assume that the noise power is constant over a frame
and, therefore, the noise variance
2
(p)
at each antenna can
be estimated frame by frame, exploiting the available training
blocks. In the sequel, we discuss two methods for estimating

2
(p)
. The rst is based on ML reasoning while the second is
derived from an ad hoc argument.
A. ML-Based Estimation (MLBE)
Collecting (17) and (19) yields
X
(p)
m
= C
m
Fh
(p)
m
+W
(p)
m
(38)
where W
(p)
m
is Gaussian distributed with zero mean and covari-
ance matrix
2
(p)
I
2N
. Recalling that C
m
is known (training
block), the joint ML estimates of
2
(p)
and h
(p)
m
, based on
the observation of X
(p)
m
, are found by maximizing the log-
likelihood function

_

2
(p)
,

h
(p)
m
_
=2N ln
_

2
(p)
_

1

2
(p)
_
_
_X
(p)
m
C
m
F

h
(p)
m
_
_
_
2
(39)
with respect to the trial values
2
(p)
and

h
(p)
m
. Keeping
2
(p)
xed and maximizing (
2
(p)
,

h
(p)
m
) with respect to

h
(p)
m
produces

h
(p)
m
=
_
D
H
m
D
m
_
1
D
H
m
X
(p)
m
(40)
with D
m
= C
m
F. Next, substituting (40) into (39) and maxi-
mizing with respect to
2
(p)
gives the ML estimate of
2
(p)

2
(p)
ML
=
1
2N
_
_
_D

m
X
(p)
m
_
_
_
2
(41)
where D

m
= I
2N
D
m
(D
H
m
D
m
)
1
D
H
m
is the orthogonal
complement of D
m
. Note that D

m
depends on the training
symbols (through C
m
) and can be precomputed and stored in
the receiver. It can be shown that
E
_

2
(p)
ML
_
=
N L
N

2
(p)
(42)
which means that
2
(p)
ML
is a biased estimator. On the
other hand, averaging (41) over the available training blocks
2514 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 4, NO. 5, SEPTEMBER 2005
TABLE II
COMPUTATIONAL COMPLEXITY OF THE NOISE-POWER
ESTIMATOR PER FRAME
(to improve the estimation accuracy) produces the following
unbiased estimate

2
(p)
MLBE
=
1
2N
T
(N L)
N
T
1

m=0
_
_
_D

m
X
(p)
m
_
_
_
2
(43)
with N
T
being the number of training blocks. In the sequel,
(43) is referred to as the MLBE. Its variance is computed using
ordinary manipulations and reads
var
_

2
(p)
MLBE
_
=
_

2
(p)
_
2
2N
T
(N L)
. (44)
The overall operations required by MLBE for each frame are
shown in the rst line of Table II. The major complexity arises
from the computation of vectors {D

m
X
(p)
m
} in (43), which is
cumbersome for large values of N. For this reason, it is worth
looking for a simpler suboptimal solution.
B. Ad Hoc Estimation
Returning to (9) and recalling that H
(p)
m
(n) = 0 for n I =
{N

, N

+ 1, . . . , 2N N

} yields
X
(p)
m
(n) = W
(p)
m
(n), n I; p = 1, 2, . . . , P (45)
where W
(p)
m
(n) are statistically independent Gaussian random
variables with zero mean and variance
2
(p)
. Inspection of (45)
suggests the following estimate of
2
(p)

2
(p)
AHE
=
1
N
T
N
I
N
T
1

m=0

nI

X
(p)
m
(n)

2
(46)
with N
I
being the cardinality of I. Since (46) is not based on an
optimality criterion, it is referred to as ad hoc estimator (AHE)
in the sequel.
With standard calculations, it is found that AHE is unbiased,
with variance
var
_

2
(p)
AHE
_
=
_

2
(p)
_
2
N
T
N
I
. (47)
To compare the accuracy of AHE and MLBE, we introduce
the ratio = var{
2
(p)
AHE
}/var{
2
(p)
MLBE
}. Recalling that N
I
=
2(N N

) + 1 and N

N(1 +)/2, from (44) and (47),

we have

2
_
1
L
N
_
1
. (48)
In practical applications, L is smaller than N (say L N/5)
and MLBE outperforms the AHE since is greater than unity.
However, AHE is much simpler to implement (the overall
operations are shown in the second line of Table II). Note that
grows to innity as approaches unity, meaning that AHE
fails with a large excess bandwidth. In these circumstances, the
MLBE is indispensable.
VI. SIMULATION RESULTS
Computer simulations have been run to assess the perfor-
mance of an SC-FDE receiver employing the proposed channel
and noise-power-estimation schemes. The system parameters
are as follows.
A. System Parameters
The transmitted symbols belong to a quaternary PSK(QPSK)
constellation and are related to the information bits through a
Gray map. The modulation pulse g(t) is a root-raised-cosine
function with roll-off = 0.35 and duration T
g
= 6T. Assuming
a maximum expected path delay of 10 s, this corresponds
to a CIR length of L = int(10R + 6), where R = 1/T is the
signaling rate in megabaud. The length N
G
of the cyclic prex
is set equal to L and results in an effective bit rate of R
b
=
2RN/(L +N) (ignoring the overhead due to training blocks).
The carrier frequency is f
0
= 2 GHz (corresponding to a
wavelength = 15 cm) and the interelement spacing in the
antenna array is d = 2. Each frame is made of 100 blocks [3]
and is preceded by a preamble of ve blocks for channel and
noise-power estimation.
As indicated in (7), the CIR at the pth antenna is generated
with six paths (N
p
= 6). At the start of each frame, a new set of
path delays, complex gains, and DOAs are randomly generated.
The path delays and DOAs are uniformly distributed within
[0, 10 s] and [60

, 60

], respectively, and are kept constant

over a frame. The path gains with power
2

= exp(/2) (0
5) vary independently of each other within a frame. They
are generated by passing complex-valued and statistically in-
dependent white Gaussian processes through a third-order low-
pass Butterworth lter. The 3-dB bandwidth of the lter is taken
as a measure of the Doppler rate f
D
= f
0
v/c, where v is the
mobile speed and c denotes the speed of light. As in a well-
designed system the channel coherence time is much larger
than the block duration, we assume that the path gains are static
within a single block [3].
Simulations results are given for R = 2 Mbaud, L = 26, and
N = 128. The mobile velocity and the number of diversity
branches are given different values to assess their impact on
the system performance. The optimal selection of the step
size and the forgetting factor for the adaptive channel
estimators depends on the fading rate. Simulations indicate
that for mobile speeds between 25 and 140 km/h, a good
choice of the adaptation parameters is = 3 10
3
for LMS-
UCE, = 6 10
3
for LMS-SCE, and = 0.5 for RLS-UCE.
As mentioned earlier, RLS-SCE is not considered due to its
complexity.
The noise power spectral density is the same at each
diversity branch (i.e., we set N
(p)
0
= N
0
for p = 1, 2, . . . , P).
MORELLI et al.: CHANNEL ESTIMATION FOR ADAPTIVE FREQUENCY-DOMAIN EQUALIZATION 2515
Fig. 3. Performance of the noise-power estimators.
Finally, bearing in mind that h
(p)
m
(t) is bandlimited to
|f| (1 +)/2T,

H
(p)
m
(n) is forced to 0 for n I.
B. Performance Assessment
We begin by comparing the performance of the noise-power
estimators. Fig. 3 shows the accuracy of AHE and MLBE
versus 1/
2
in the case of a single-antenna receiver. Marks
indicate simulations while solid lines represent analytical re-
sults as given by (44) and (47). Good agreement is observed
between simulations and theory. As expected, MLBE gives the
best results. However, extensive simulations (not shown for
space limitations) indicate that using MLBE instead of AHE
does not produce signicant improvements in the error-rate
performance. For this reason, MLBE is not considered further
due to its complexity.
The system performance has been assessed in terms of bit
error rate (BER) versus E
b
/N
0
, where E
b
is the energy per
bit. Fig. 4 illustrates the BER of a receiver employing the
proposed channel estimators. The mobile velocity is 25 km/h
(corresponding to f
D
= 47 Hz) and the receiver is equipped
with a single antenna (P = 1). The curve labeled ICI (ideal
channel information) corresponds to a perfect knowledge of
the channel response and noise power and serves as a bench-
mark. The performance of CADs [3], using either the LMS
(LMS-CAD) or RLS (RLS-CAD) adaptation rules, is also
shown for comparison. Finally, the curve labeled LMS-TDE
indicates the performance of a conventional T/2-spaced time-
domain equalizer employing the LMS algorithm. For an error
probability of 10
3
, LMS-UCE and RLS-UCE have similar
performance and are approximately 3.5 dBfromICI. LMS-SCE
gives the best results while LMS-TDE and LMS-CAD have
poor performance due to their limited tracking capabilities.
It is likely that the convergence rate of LMS-CAD can be
improved by using a different step size for each frequency bin,
as suggested in [4].
Figs. 5 and 6 show analogous results with mobile speeds
of 70 and 140 km/h. Note that the simulation results with ICI
do not depend on the fading rate, as the channel is assumed
Fig. 4. BER versus E
b
/N
0
with a single-antenna receiver and v = 25 km/h.
Fig. 5. BER versus E
b
/N
0
with a single-antenna receiver and v = 70 km/h.
constant within each block. We see that the BER deteriorates
as the mobile speed increases and all detectors exhibit an error
oor. LMS-SCE is always superior but it becomes unsatisfac-
tory as the mobile speed increases. The performance of LMS-
TDE (not shown in the gures) is similar to that of LMS-CAD.
Figs. 7 and 8 illustrate simulations obtained in the same oper-
ating conditions of Figs. 4 and 5, except that four antennas are
now employed. We see that the multiple antennas dramatically
improve the system performance. For an error probability of
10
3
and a mobile speed of 70 km/h, the loss of LMS-SCE
with respect to ICI is 1.5 dB while it is 5 dB with either
LMS-UCE or RLS-UCE. When the mobile speed increases to
140 km/h, LMS-SCE is 2.5 dB from ICI while both LMS-UCE
and RLS-UCE exhibit a oor. Clarks detectors and LMS-TDE
cannot track fast fading and have the worst performance.
Fig. 9 shows the learning curves of a receiver employing the
proposed channel estimators. The MSE at the detector input is
computed by averaging over 1000 simulation runs. The mobile
speed is 70 km/h and E
b
/N
0
is set to 15 dB. Four antennas are
employed at the receiver. We see that RLS-UCE achieves an
2516 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 4, NO. 5, SEPTEMBER 2005
Fig. 6. BERversus E
b
/N
0
with a single-antenna receiver and v = 140 km/h.
Fig. 7. BER versus E
b
/N
0
with four receiving antennas and v = 70 km/h.
MSE of approximately 2 10
2
after only two training blocks
while LMS-UCE takes more than ten blocks to converge.
LMS-SCE has the lowest MSE in the steady state, but its
acquisition time is longer than that of RLS-UCE.
Fig. 10 shows the computational complexity of the various
detection and channel-estimation schemes expressed in mil-
lions of oating operations per second (FLOPS) versus the bit
rate R
b
(expressed in megabits per second). The curves are
computed from Tables I and II with P = 1 (single-antenna
receiver), assuming that AHE is employed for noise-power
estimation. We see that FDE affords substantial computational
savings with respect to a conventional TDE, especially at high
bit rates. Also, the frequency-domain equalizer with LMS-SCE
is only slightly more complex than the other schemes.
VII. CONCLUSION
We have discussed three channel-estimation schemes for
adaptive FDE in SC systems. They exploit a sequence of
training blocks placed at the beginning of each data frame and
Fig. 8. BER versus E
b
/N
0
with four receiving antennas and v = 140 km/h.
Fig. 9. Learning curves with four receiving antennas, v = 70 km/h, and
E
b
/N
0
= 15 dB.
Fig. 10. Complexity of the proposed schemes.
MORELLI et al.: CHANNEL ESTIMATION FOR ADAPTIVE FREQUENCY-DOMAIN EQUALIZATION 2517
operate in an iterative fashion. Two of them, LMS-UCE and
RLS-UCE, assume independently faded frequency bins while
the third scheme, LMS-SCE, uses a structured approach that
improves the quality of the channel estimates. In addition to
channel-state information, frequency-domain MMSE equaliza-
tion requires knowledge of the noise power. To this purpose, a
simple algorithm based on ad hoc reasoning has been proposed.
The performance of all these schemes has been investigated
analytically and by simulation. It has been found that LMS-
SCE outperforms the other methods. The price to pay is a slight
increase in complexity, which, however, is still much smaller
than that of a conventional TDE. Compared with other existing
schemes based on adaptive FDE, the proposed methods have
better performance due to their enhanced tracking capabilities.
In particular, a four-branch receiver employing LMS-SCE can
handle a mobile speed of 140 km/h with only a 3-dB loss with
respect to an ideal system with perfect channel knowledge.
APPENDIX A
In this appendix, we highlight the major steps leading to the
performance of LMS-UCE. For simplicity, we assume that the
channel is static and we drop the superscript ()
(p)
designating
the diversity branch. We begin by computing the conditional
expectation E{e
m
|

H
m
}. To this purpose, we substitute (17)
into (23) to obtain
e
m
= C
H
m
C
m

H
m
+C
H
m
W
m
(A1)
where

H
m
= H

H
m
is the estimation error at the mth
step and {W
m
} are statistically independent Gaussian vectors
with zero mean and covariance matrix
2
I
2N
. Then, using
the identity E{C
H
m
C
m
} = N (which is valid for i.i.d. data
symbols with zero mean and unit variance) produces
E{e
m
|

H
m
} = N

H
m
. (A2)
From above, we see that e
m
may be thought of as the sum
of N

H
m
plus some zero-mean disturbance term
m
.
Accordingly, recursion (22) may be rewritten as

H
m+1
= (1 N)

H
m

m
(A3)
with
m
= (C
H
m
C
m
N I)

H
m
+C
H
m
W
m
. Since in
the steady state

H
m
H (i.e.,

H
m
0), it is reasonable
to approximate
m
as

m
C
H
m
W
m
. (A4)
Inspection of (A3) reveals that

H
m
may be viewed as the
response to
m
of a digital lter with impulse response
p
k
=
_
(1 N)
k1
, k 1
0, otherwise.
(A5)
Thus, (A3) becomes

H
m
=

i
p
i

mi
. (A6)
Recalling that
m
has zero mean, from (A6), we see that
E{

H
m
} = 0, meaning that

H
m
is an unbiased esti-
mate of H.
Returning to (A4), we observe that vectors {
m
} are inde-
pendent for different values of m and have covariance matrix
C

=
2
N I
2N
. Putting these facts together, from (A6),
we have
E
_

H
m

H
H
m
_
=
_

2
N

i
p
2
i
_
I
2N
. (A7)
Next, substituting (A5) into (A7) and using the identity

H
m

2
= tr{

H
m

H
H
m
} produces
E
_

H
m

2
_
=
2N
2 N

2
. (A8)
At this stage, we introduce the noise equivalent bandwidth of
the lter p
k
[15, p. 126]
B
L
=
N
2(2 N)T
B
. (A9)
Then, collecting (A8) and (A9) yields (24) in the text.
APPENDIX B
In this appendix, we derive an iterative procedure to
minimize
J
RLS-SCE
(

h) =
m

i=0

mi
X
i
C
i
F

h
2
(B1)
with respect to

h. We begin by setting the gradient of
J
RLS-SCE
(

h) to zero and solving for

h =

h
m+1
. This produces
R
m

h
m+1
= d
m
(B2)
where
R
m
=
m

i=0

mi
F
H
C
H
i
C
i
F (B3)
d
m
=
m

i=0

mi
F
H
C
H
i
X
i
. (B4)
Next, we observe that R
m
and d
m
may be computed
iteratively as
R
m
=R
m1
+F
H
C
H
m
C
m
F (B5)
d
m
=d
m1
+F
H
C
H
m
X
m
. (B6)
Then, replacing

h
m+1
with [

h
m+1


h
m
] +

h
m
in (B2) and
using (B5) and (B6) yields
R
m
[

h
m+1


h
m
] +
_
R
m1
+F
H
C
H
m
C
m
F

h
m
= d
m1
+F
H
C
H
m
X
m
. (B7)
2518 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 4, NO. 5, SEPTEMBER 2005
Finally, bearing in mind that R
m1

h
m
= d
m1
, (B7) re-
duces to
R
m
[

h
m+1


h
m
] = F
H
C
H
m
[X
m
C
m
F

h
m
] (B8)
from which (34) in the text follows easily.
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Michele Morelli (M04) received the Laurea degree
(cum laude) in electrical engineering and the Pre-
mio di Laurea SIP degree from the University of
Pisa, Pisa, Italy, in 1991 and 1992, respectively, and
the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the
Department of Information Engineering, University
of Pisa, in 1995.
In September 1996, he was a Research Assistant
at the Centro Studi Metodi e Dispositivi per Ra-
diotrasmissioni (CSMDR), Italian National Research
Council (CNR), Pisa, Italy. Since 2001, he has been
with the Department of Information Engineering, University of Pisa, where
he is currently an Associate Professor of Telecommunications. His research
interests are in wireless communication theory, with emphasis on equalization,
synchronization, and channel estimation in multiple-access communication
systems.
Luca Sanguinetti (S04) received the Laurea degree
(cum laude) in information engineering from the
University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy, in 2002, and is cur-
rently working toward the Ph.D. degree in informa-
tion engineering in the Department of Information
Engineering, University of Pisa.
In 2004, he was a Visiting Ph.D. Student at
the German Aerospace Center (DLR), Oberpfaffen-
hofen, Germany. His research interests span the areas
of communications and signal processing, estima-
tion, and detection theory. Current research topics
focus on transmitter and receiver diversity techniques for single- and multiuser
fading communication channels, antenna array processing, channel estimation
and equalization, multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems, multicarrier
systems, and linear and nonlinear preltering for interference mitigation in
multiuser environments.
Umberto Mengali (M69SM85F90LF03) re-
ceived the degree in electrical engineering from the
University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy, and the Libera Do-
cenza degree in telecommunications from the Italian
Education Ministry, Italy, in 1971.
Since 1963, he has been with the Department of
Information Engineering, University of Pisa, where
he is a Professor of Telecommunications. In 1994,
he was a Visiting Professor at the University of
Canterbury, New Zealand, as an Erskine Fellow.
His research interests are in digital communications
and communication theory, with emphasis on synchronization methods and
modulation techniques. He coauthored the book Synchronization Techniques
for Digital Receivers (Plenum Press, 1997).
Prof. Mengali is a member of the Communication Theory Committee and
was the Editor of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COMMUNICATIONS from1985
to 1991 and of the European Transactions on Telecommunications from 1997
to 2000. He has served on the technical program committees of several interna-
tional conferences and was Co-Chair of the 2004 International Symposium on
Information Theory and Applications (ISITA).