IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 58, NO.

3, MARCH 2010

733

Channel Estimation for OFDM System with

Two Training Symbols Aided and Polynomial Fitting
Huang Chang Lee, Chao-Wei Chen, and Shyue-Win Wei, Senior Member, IEEE

AbstractA time-varying channel estimation method for orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems is
presented. The presented channel estimation method employs
two training symbols in combination with polynomial fitting, thus
obtaining accurate estimation results under a large normalized
Doppler frequency.
Index TermsOFDM, channel estimation, time-varying channel, large normalized Doppler frequency, two training symbols.

I. I NTRODUCTION

RTHOGONAL frequency division multiplexing

(OFDM) is a high spectral efficiency transmission
scheme. It divides a wideband signal into many orthogonal
subcarriers and induces a symbol period that is much
longer than the bit duration. However, a long symbol
period is sensitive to the time-varying channel in wireless
communications. The channel response might change during
an OFDM symbol period in a high-mobility environment.
Therefore, orthogonality among subcarriers is destroyed, and
inter-carrier interference (ICI) occurs [1]-[2].
Channel estimation for OFDM systems can be generally
partitioned into two categories. The first assumes that the
time-varying channel remains unchanged within an OFDM
symbol period [3]-[4]. In this case, the channel response
within one OFDM symbol period can be simply expressed
using an -tuple vector, where is the number of subcarriers in the OFDM. This channel estimation category is
called vector channel estimation in this paper. The second
category considers the fact that channel response can vary
during an OFDM symbol period if a very fast fading channel
is considered [2], [5]-[7]. For these methods, the channel
response is an -by- matrix, and 2 unknowns need to be
determined. This is referred to as matrix channel estimation. If
the channel response changes smoothly for each path, then the
response of each path can be modeled using a linear function
within an OFDM symbol; thus the number of unknowns can
be reduced [5]-[6]. For the next-generation mobile system,
vehicular speeds can be as high as 350 km/hr. This implies that
the normalized Doppler frequency is very large, where
denotes the Doppler frequency, and is the OFDM symbol
Paper approved by S. K. Wilson, the Editor for Multicarrier Modulation
of the IEEE Communications Society. Manuscript received February 2, 2008;
revised October 1, 2008, July 5, 2009, and October 2, 2009.
H. C. Lee and C.-W. Chen are with the Graduate Institute of Communication Engineering, National Chi Nan University, Taiwan (e-mail: {s1323513,
s94325501}@ncnu.edu.tw).
S.-W. Wei is with the Department of Electrical Engineering, National Chi
Nan University, Taiwan (e-mail: will@ncnu.edu.tw).
This work was supported in part by the National Science Council under
grant NSC95-2219-E-260-001.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TCOMM.2010.03.080053

period. To further improve the estimation accuracy, a full-rank

two training symbol-aided scheme is presented in this paper.
II. OFDM T RANSMISSION IN T IME - VARYING C HANNELS
To maintain orthogonality among the subcarriers of an
OFDM symbol, a cyclic prefix (CP) is generally added to every symbol. The CP length should cover the channel response
duration. Let x be the transmitted OFDM symbol before CP
is added.
x=

(0) (1)

( - 1)

(1)

The OFDM symbol with CP extension is then passed

through a wireless fading channel (, ). A tapped delay line
multipath fading channel model is adopted [8].
(, ) =

() ( ) ,

(2)

=0

where is the path delay, and is the total number of

paths; is used to control the average power of -th path;
and () indicates the time-varying gain of the -th path
with normalized power [9]. Generally, a discrete-time channel
model (, ) can be obtained if we observe (, ) at = kT in
time profile and = 0 in delay spread. In our simulations,
0 is the reciprocal of the system bandwidth, and is the
digital-to-analog (D/A) converter sampling rate. Once (, )
is given, the received signal can be represented in matrix form
as follows [2]:
y = gx + n

(3)

where g is an -by- matrix constructed by (, ), =0,

1, 2 . . . , N-1, = 0, 1, 2 . . . , L-1 [2]. The received symbol y
and background noise n are - tuple vectors. To analyze the
signals in the frequency domain, a Fourier transform matrix
F of by size is given [2], [5]. According to the Fourier
transform pair matrices, the received signal can be expressed
in the frequency domain as
Y = FgFH X + W
= HX + W

(4)

In the above equation, W is the frequency domain noise

vector; H is denoted as the frequency domain channel matrix;
and F denotes applying a Hermitan operation on F. When
channel matrix H is known, X can be detected by solving the
above equation, for example, by using the zero-forcing (ZF)
detection [10].
If the channel response is time invariant within an OFDM
symbol, H will be a diagonal matrix. When the channel

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734

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 58, NO. 3, MARCH 2010

D data symbols
Training

data

data

data

data

Estimation + Interpolated by Q-order polynomial

Time-varying channel response

Training

Q=1
Q=2

Fig. 1. Channel estimation for the data symbols with two inserted training
symbols and -order polynomial fitting.

Y () = F(, :)g F X + W () , = 0, 1, . . . , - 1;
= 1, 2,

(5)
in which (,:) denotes the -th row of matrix F. Because
there are at most non-zero values in each column of matrix
g , (5) can be further simplified as
Y () = X ()

response is time-varying within an OFDM symbol, matrix H

will no longer be a diagonal matrix and ICI will occur. In
practice, obtaining the matrix H in a time-varying environment
is very difficult. For an OFDM system with subcarriers,
the size of H is by , and thus 2 unknowns need to be
solved. To reduce the number of unknowns, an approach using
the curve fitting polynomial in matrix g can be employed.

=1 =0

=0

1
=0

0, exp(2
)+

X ()SCC ( ) exp(2
)+

W () , = 0, 1, . . . , - 1; = 1, 2,

(6)
where X () is the -th transmitted signal appearing at the -th
subcarrier, and
SCC () =

1
1
( + ( 1)( + 1)( + )) exp(2

) ,

III. C HANNEL E STIMATION WITH T WO T RAINING

S YMBOLS AND P OLYNOMIAL F ITTING
As mentioned above, H can be transformed from the timedomain matrix g. Because we do not exactly know the number
of paths, the worst case that the channel delay spread becomes
equal to the length of CP should be considered. If we estimate
the time domain matrix g rather than H, then the number of
unknowns can be reduced to NL. It has been shown that when
the channel response does not vary too fast, such as when
the OFDM symbol period is 8% of the channel coherence
time or less [11], the channel response varies almost linearly
within one OFDM symbol. If the channel response of each
path is modeled by a linear function, then only two unknowns
for each path need to be solved.
For the conventional pilot symbol-aided (PSA) channel
estimation method with first-order polynomial, as the channel
response is estimated symbol by symbol, the pilots and data
subcarriers must coexist within the same symbol. In this case,
the pilots are interfered by the ICI from the data subcarriers.
Therefore, the channel estimation performance is limited by
the ICI. In this paper, a modified matrix channel estimation
method with two training symbols in combination with a
polynomial curve fitting is presented. As shown in Fig. 1,
the first-order and second-order polynomials are used as
examples. The training symbols are equally inserted between
data symbols. indicates the number of data symbols. For
example, = 3 means that the training symbols are inserted
for every three data symbols. It is clear that the second training
symbol begins from the (+1)( + )-th sample to the
(+1)( + )+( -1)-th sample. Following the definition in
[2], the time-domain channel matrix g , =1, 2, for the first
training symbol and the second training symbol can be easily
obtained. As polynomial coefficients , , =0, 1, . . . , Q, l
= 0, 1, . . . , L-1,are determined, the channel responses for the
data symbols can be obtained. Therefore, the number of
unknowns for the presented channel method can be reduced
to (+1) with -order polynomial fitting.
Assuming that X is given, the received symbol Y can be
expressed per subcarrier as

=0

= 0, 1, . . . , - 1; = 1, 2 , . . . , ; = 1,2

(7)
represent the correlation among subcarriers, and they are
defined as the subcarrier correlation (SCC) vectors. (6) can
now be expressed in matrix form as follows:
[

Y1
Y2

[
=

A1
A2

B11
B12

B21
B22

BQ
1
BQ
2

W1
W2

C+

]
(8)

where Y 1 and Y 2 are the received symbols corresponding to

the first and the second training symbols, while matrix C =
[0,0 0,1 . . . 0,1 1,0 1,1 . . . 1,1 . . . ,1 ] is
the polynomial coefficients. Matrices A1 , A2 and B1 , B2 , =
1, 2, . . . , Q, can be constructed as follows:

A (, ) = X ()(2 ) , = 0, 1, . . . , - 1;
= 0, 1, . . . , - 1; = 1, 2
B (, ) =

X ()2

(9)

SCC ( ),

=
=0
= 0, 1, . . . , - 1;
= 0, 1, . . . , - 1; = 1, 2, . . . , ; i = 1, 2
By defining a new matrix
[
A1 B11
H =
A2 B12

B21
B22

BQ
1
BQ
2

(10)

]
,

(11)

the coefficients C can then be estimated with a pseudo-inverse

operation as
[

0,0

(
H H

)1

0,1
[
]
Y1

H
Y2

,0

,1

(12)

The solution accuracy depends on the background noise

W. When (+1) < 2 , a solution exists. As discussed

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LEE et al.: CHANNEL ESTIMATION FOR OFDM SYSTEM WITH TWO TRAINING SYMBOLS AIDED AND POLYNOMIAL FITTING

10

10

10

-1

10
D=9
D=7
D=5
D=3
D=1

-2

-3

10

10

10

10

10

10

-5

10

-7

NMS E

10

10

10

10

10

-3

-4

-5

-6

fdT =0.1
fdT =0.08
fdT =0.05
fdT =0.03
fdT =0.01
fdT =0.001
fdT =0

-7

-8

10

15

20
25
E b/N 0 (dB )

30

35

40

45

(a) = 0.025

10

10

10

-6

10

-2

-4

NMS E

NMS E

10

735

D=9
D=7
D=5
D=3
D=1

-2

-3

-4

-5

-6

10

15

20
25
E b/N 0 (dB )

30

35

40

10

15

20
25
E b/N 0 (dB )

30

35

40

45

Fig. 3. Mean square error of channel estimation for different normalized

Doppler frequencies under COST207 BU channel (polynomial order = 2;
data symbols = 3).

-1

45

(b) = 0.1
Fig. 2. Mean square error of channel estimation with different numbers of
data symbols () under COST207 BU channel (polynomial order = 2).

above, the presented estimation method observes the two

training symbols first, and it then uses curve fitting to estimate
the channel response for the data symbols. Because the
variation cycle of each path response is inversely proportional
to the normalized Doppler frequency, the two training symbols
and the data symbols are better located within one-half of
the variation cycle. That is, +2 < 1/2 is recommended.
IV. P ERFORMANCE V ERIFICATION
Fig. 2 shows the performance of the presented channel
estimation method under the COST207 bad urban area (BU)
multipath fading channel [9]. A second-order polynomial is
used in the simulation. Two normalized Doppler frequencies
under various data symbols are tested. The number of subcarriers is 512, and the CP length is 64. The training symbols are
pseudo-random noise (PN) sequences with quadrature phase
shift keying (QPSK) modulation, which is also employed for
all data symbols in the simulations. If the radio frequency (RF)
is 2.5GHz and the signal bandwidth is 5MHz, then = 0.1
implies a vehicular speed of 400km/hr, such as a high-speed
railway environment, while = 0.025 implies a car speed

of 100km/hr. In the simulations, the normalized mean square

error (NMSE) of channel estimation is used by normalizing
the multipath fading channel gain. That is, the average power
measured at the channel input is equal to that measured at the
channel output. As shown in Fig. 2, the presented method
can reach an excellent estimation performance for a large
normalized Doppler frequency. The overhead of the presented
method is 1/(+1). For example, = 3 implies an overhead
of 25%.
Fig. 3 displays the results from the presented channel estimation method under different normalized Doppler frequencies. As can be seen, a second-order polynomial is required
for a larger normalized Doppler frequency. Fig. 3 shows that
the proposed channel estimation method with = 2 can work
well for as large as 0.1. In the special case of static
channel, = 0, estimation only needs to be performed once
initially. This implies that = 0 can be used for static channel
estimation, which is the performance bound of the presented
method.
Fig. 4 shows the performance of state-of-the-art matrix
channel estimation methods, namely, the Mostofi method [5],
Chen method [6], and Choi method [7], given as comparisons.
To obtain the best performance, the number of pilots used
in these methods is half of the subcarriers. This overhead
is equivalent to the case of = 2, = 1 in our presented
channel estimation method. Two types of channel estimation
algorithms were presented by Mostofi, and they are called
Mostofi -I and Mostofi -II, respectively. The Chen method
is referred to as Chen. Both the Mostofi and Chen methods
use first-order polynomials for channel estimation. Note that
in Mostofi-I, a constant slope is assumed over one OFDM
symbol, while in Mostofi-II a constant slope is assumed in
between the mid-points of two consecutive symbols. That is,
a piece-wise linear model for channel response is employed in
Mostofi-II. In the Choi method, perfect knowledge of Doppler
frequency is assumed. = = 2 is employed in the
simulation, where is the number of pilot symbols, while
indicates the pilot spacing [7].

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 58, NO. 3, MARCH 2010

10

10

NMS E

10

10

10

10

10

V. C ONCLUSION

C hen
Q=1, D=1
Mos tofi-I
Mos tofi-II
Q=2, D=2
Q=2, D=1
C hoi

-1

-2

-3

-4

-5

-6

10

15

20
25
E b/N 0 (dB )

30

35

40

45

Fig. 4.
Performance comparisons between the presented method with
different data symbols and other methods under COST207 BU channel
with = 0.1.

10

C hen
Q=1, D=1
Mos tofi-I
Mos tofi-II
Q=2, D=2
C hoi
Q=2, D=1
P erfect

-1

BER

10

10

10

-2

-3

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

E /N (dB )
b

Fig. 5.
Bit error rate comparisons between the presented method with
different data symbols and other methods under COST207 BU channel
with = 0.1.

After the channel estimation is performed, the signal can

be detected using ZF detection [10] or other methods. Fig. 5
shows the bit error rate (BER) performance when ZF detection
is employed. Better detection can be achieved if better channel
estimation performance is obtained. In Fig. 5, the curve perfect
illustrates the BER performance with perfect knowledge of the
channel.

A channel estimation method for OFDM systems in fast

time-varying channels has been presented. The presented
method uses the structure of two training symbols in combination with polynomial fitting. Thus, it can provide enough
channel estimation accuracy for even a normalized Doppler
frequency as large as 0.1. The major advantage of using the
two training symbols is that no ICI can disturb the estimation.
The disadvantages of the presented channel method include:
(1) increased computational complexity, and (2) requirement
of a long buffer with +2 symbols. Furthermore, as the
variation cycle of each path response is inversely proportional
to the normalized Doppler frequency, the two training symbols
and the data symbols are better located within one-half of
the variation cycle.
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