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Abstract—This paper proposes an uneven pilot-assisted channel maximal vehicle speed, we use the practical linear fashion to
estimation (CE) technique for OFDM sysetms in mobile approximate CIR variations. We find that the theoretical
environments. We find that the prerequisites of most previous researches using the comb pilots and linear fashion to
studies are using an equal spaced pilots pattern and sample- approximate time domain CIR variations[9-11] are mostly
spaced channels. This is not the case in practical systems. based on requierments as follows: (1) Pilots must distributed
According to conventional pilot-assisted estimators, we develop evenly in whole frequency band; (2) No power leakage in
an improved channel estimation method based on the criteria of multipath fading channels. In practical systems, many factors
Lesat Square (LS) for IEEE802.16e OFDM systems. In this should be taken into consideration. Such as the uneven pilot
practical system, pilots are not evenly inserted in the frequency
distribution and error floor caused by CIR leakage due to the
band and the non-sample-spaced multipath delay leads to
necessary guard bands and the unsampled multipath delays [8].
channel impulse response (CIR) leakage in the time domain. The
proposed uneven pilot-assisted CE method is conducted in the Significant performance reductions [7] will be caused when
frequency domain and it uses a linear model to approximate the the requirements are not satisfied. Based on analysis above,
time-varying characteristic of CIR in the frequency domain we develop a feasible uneven pilot-assisted CE method, which
during each OFDM symbol. Analysis and simulations is conducted in the frequency domain using the linear model
demonstrate its low computational complexity, good to approximate frequency domain CIR variations.
performance and practicability in actual OFDM systems. In the rest of the paper, we first present the OFDM system
Keywords-channel estimation; uneven pilot; LS; linear model;
model of time-varying channles used in the paper. Besides, ICI
time-varying channel
analysis are given in Section II. In Section III, we address the
I. INTRODUCTION problems of conventional methods. Based on the analysis
Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is above, an improved un-even pilot assisted CE method is
one of the most important physical layer transmission developed. Simulation results are presented in Section IV.
techniques in wireless communications. In OFDM, data are Finally, conclusions and future research works are stated.
transmitted in parallel over a large number of orthogonal
subcarriers. OFDM is robust to multi-path channels for its Basic notations: italic letters to denote variables, 䯴 .䯵 H for
lower symbol rate. However the increased symbol duration Hermitian transpose, 䯴 .䯵* for complex conjugat, ⊗ for
makes it more susceptible to time-variations of channels. In circular convolution.
high mobility environments, CIR varies severely in a certain
period of time. Inter-carrier interference (ICI) destroys the II. SYSTEM MODEL AND ICI ANALYSIS
orthogonality. Accordingly, OFDM systems encounter
performance degradations in such time-varying channels. As a A. System Model
result, CE techniques in time-varying scenarios are critical .
We consider an N-point OFDM system, Ts denotes one
There has been a large body of works devoted to channel symbol period, the Doppler frequency shift f d is normalized
estimation over time-variant channels to mitigate ICI in
OFDM systems. Some of them [1-3] are proposed only to as f D = f d Ts . Perfect timing and synchronization are
track time-varying channles during one OFDM frame assumed. The i-th OFDM symbol X (i ) (k ) is used to modulate
assuming that the channel is stationary over the period of one
OFDM symbol. Previous works of [4-6] have investigated the N- carriers as x (i) (n) = F H X (i ) (k ) , where F stands for the N
CE techniques when the channel fading envelope is varying point discrete Fourier transform (DFT) matrix with
during one OFDM symbol. [F] p , q = 1 N esp (− j2πpq/N ). x (i) (n) is next concatenated by
In this paper, we mainly specialize to channel estimations cyclic prefix (CP). After sending over the channel, the
using the stated comb pilots in IEEE802.16e OFDM Physical received signal can be expressed as
Layer (PHY) mode. According to system parameters and the
This research is jointly founded by The HK-Guangdong Scientific and
Technological Project in Key Areas under grant No:20060104-2 and the Pre- y (i ) (n) = x (i ) (n) ⊗ h(n, l ) + w (i ) (n) , (1)
research Dept.of Huawei Technologies.
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where w (i ) (n) represents the additive white Gaussian noise { }
E C (Δk , k )C (Δk , k ) ∗ = S ( f ) ⊗ V ( f ) |
f=
Δk ¦σ l
2
. (5)
(AWGN) and h(n, l ) denotes the sampled 2-demention time- N l
We further express it as
N −1
Figure 1. Impacts of ICI versusd for various f D values
Y (i ) (m) = ¦ G(m, k ) X
k = 0,
(i)
(k ) + W (i ) (m),0 ≤ m ≤ N − 1. (2)
¦ Gˆ (i )
( pD, pD) exp
j2πpl
.l = 0, ! , N p − 1 . (7)
characterizes ICI energy distributions around the subcarrier k. N p=0 Np
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pilot subcarriers. The index 0 is DC subcarrier. The indices of -
ave − h ( n, l ) } is minimized
(i )
For the l-th channel tap, E{ h (i)
128 to -101 and 101 to 127 are guard bands.
when n = N − 1 .Then the linear mode is applied and then
2
channel variations in time-domain can be obtained. Assuming
the constant slope of the l-th channel tap is αˆ (i ) (l ) , h(n, l ) can ...... ...... ...... ...... ...... ...... ......
be approximated as forllows: ⋅N
⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅ ⋅N
⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅
hˆ (i ) (n, l ) = hˆave
(i )
( )
+ αˆ (i ) (l ) n + 1 − N .n = 0, " , N − 1 .
2
(8)
L −1 N −1
From Fig.2, we can see that pilots are actually not even
1 2π (k − m)n 2πlk over the whole frequency band for the guard band and DC
Gˆ ( i ) (m, k ) =
N ¦¦
l =0 n=0
h(n, l ) exp( j
N
) exp( − j
N
). (9)
subcarriers. Uneven pilots and CIR leakage prevent us from
using the trational estimation methods[4-6]. Therefore, we
When the slope in each symbol are divided into two rigions develop a modified method which is totally performed in the
frequency domain. Our method avoids the mathematical
obtained by utlizing adjacent symbols, Ĝ (i ) (n, m) can be processing in transform domain which requires even comb
further described in form of (10). pilots pattern. It is performed as followings:
First, estimates of the channel frequency response at pilot
Gˆ (i ) = Gˆ ave
(i)
+ C1Gˆ slope
(i ) 2 ˆ (i )
1 + C G slope 2 . (10) subcarriers can be acquierd as (12):
where, Gˆ slope = diag{DFT ([ a(0), a(1), " , a( N − 1)])} , C1 and Gˆ (i ) ( pD, pD) = Yi,p X i,p䯴 0 ≤ p ≤ N p 䯵 . (12)
C are N × N coefficient matrices.
2
Finally, according to LS alogorithm and the frequency Then, channel frequency responses at the data subcarriers
can be obtained by interpolation[3] according to the sampling
domain expressio: Y䯴 i ) (k ) = Gˆ (i) X (i)(k) + W (i ) (k ) , the estimated theorem. DFT interpolations [11] can not be applied due to the
value of Xˆ (i) (k ) can be derived as unequal-spaced pilot pattern. We use the cubic splines
interpolation, which may cause relatively large mean square
error at the edge subcarriers[11]. To get more accurate
i) H 䯴 i) −1 䯴 i) H estimations, channel frequency responses of the 2 OFDM
Xˆ (i) (k ) = (Gˆ䯴 Gˆ 䯵 Gˆ Y (i) (k ) . (11)
preambles are employed as a reference. We synthesize the
coarse estimation by pilots and preambles togehtoer as the
This conventional methods strictly take the advantage of expression (6) in [10] to get the ultimate estimations. Then,
the even allocation of pilots over total frequencies and the guard band and DC subcarriers are set at zeros. Now, G (k , k ) is
mathematic properties of even interpolation of DFT (as the
obtained according to (3) and (4).
second step).
In additon, non-sample-spaced multi-path delays and 1
N −1
guardband subcarriers may lead to CIR leakage[8]. In (7), L
taps of CIR in time domain are kept, valid taps of CIR leakage
C (0, k ) = G (k , k ) =
N ¦ H ( n, k ) = H
n=0
ave (k ) (13)
B. Proposed CE Method
As for a practical OFDM system, the conditions above can For the k-th subcarrier, E{ H ave (k ) − H (n, k ) } is
not be satisfied. Usually, guard band subcarriers are not used to
minimized when n = N − 1 . Therefore, we use H ave (k ) to
avoid aliasing problems and the DC subcarrier is not used to 2
avoid intermodulation effects and difficulties in D/A and A/D represent an estimate of the channel at discrete time instant of
conversion. In other words, pilots in practical are not evenly N − 1 . We will have H (k ) = H ( N − 1, k ) .
inseted and CIR leakage will occured. 2 ave 2
The pilot pattern for CE in the 802.16 OFDM system is According to IEEE802.16e protocol, we choose a set of
shown in Fig. 2. All subcarriers are numbered from -128 to system parameters (N=256, B=2MHz, Ts = 128us V=120km/h).
127. The indices of -88, -63, -38, -13, 13, 38, 63 and 88 are f D = V ⋅ f c ⋅ Ts c ≈ 0.05 < 0.1 , where f c represents the
carrier frequency, V is the maximum vehicle speed and c is the
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velocity of light . Thus, the linear model can be applied here to matrix H (n,䰆) varies in a linear model with n on each specified
approximate H (n, k ) variations varying with n of H (n, k ) on subcaiier. The channel estimation and signal correction are
the k-th subcaiier. performed in the frequency domain avoding transform domain
processes. Therefore, CIR leakage cutting in time domain
Consider each three consecutive OFDM symbols, the index
process can be avoided.To demonstrate the effectiveness of
of which is i-1, i, i+1. As for the i-th OFDM symbol (the
the proposed CE approach for time-varying multipath
current symbol), the slopes of the variations can be obtained
channels, the fowlling simulations were performed.
through using the (i+1)-th OFDM symbol (the next OFDM
symbol) and the (i-1)-th OFDM symbol (the previous OFDM
symbol)[5]. It will cause a delay of one OFDM system. We IV. SIMULATIONS
assuming the constant slopes of H (n, k ) on the k-th subcarrier In this section, we will report simulation results
is α k1 and α k2 , which is depicted as Fig. 3. demonstrating the effectiveness of the proposed CE method.
Due to the limited number of pilots in 802.16 OFDM
system, a narrow bandwith of 2MHz is used for simulations.
H ( n, k )
N −1
1 2πΔkn
=
N ¦ H (n, k ) exp(− j
n =0
N
). (16)
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KS −1 2 V. CONCLUSION
1
CMSE =
NS ¦n=0
Hˆ (n, k ) − H (n, k ) . (18) In this paper, an uneven pilot-assisted CE method tracing
time-varying channels for mobile OFDM sysetms is proposed.
The method designed for the uneven comb pilot pattern, uses a
The validity of the linear model is verified by simulations. linear model to approximate the frequency domain CIR
In Fig. 5, we can see that when f D < 0.1 , variations of the variations during each OFDM symbol period. CE and
actual frequency domain CIR matrix H (n, k ) can be fitted equalizations are completely conducted in the frequency
well by the linear model during each OFDM symbol period. domain avoiding mathematical processing in the time domain.
Therefore, the linear model is proved advisable. Therefore, even comb pilot pattern is not necessary and the
cutting of the valid taps of CIR leakage can be avoided.
Simulation results shows the SER results of the proposed CE
method are satisfactory. When used in practical systems, the
algorithm is of low complexity and high efficiency. Howerver,
due to the fixed FFT size and limited quantity of pilots of
802.16 OFDM PHY mode, its ability to resist double selective
fading for a larger bandwith is relatively poor. The 802.16e
OFDMA PHY mode support FFT sizes of 128, 512, 1024 and
2048 to adapt to various bandwith requirements and the pilot
density increases correspondingly. We are currently
investigating the CE technique of double selective channels in
OFDMA PHY mode.
REFERENCES
Figure 5. CMSE of Linear model according to different f D values
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1080
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