Channel Estimation

By:
Tejas Rai B S
4NM12LEC23
Introduction
 PSK is the most popular modulation for fading
channels since its performance is not sensitive to
channel amplitude variation.

 There are two ways to demodulate the PSK signal:

• differential
• Coherent

 Coherent PSK carries the information to be

transmitted by the phase of a tone in OFDM.

 DPSK uses the phase difference to carry the

information to be transmitted.
 For OFDM, the phase difference may be
between adjacent tones of the same OFDM
block or the tones at the same position of
adjacent OFDM blocks.

 In either case, channel knowledge is not

required for demodulation.

 With channel estimation and tracking, OFDM

systems can use coherent PSK to obtain a 3 dB
signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) gain over differential
PSK (DPSK).
fora channel with only AWGN, the bit error
probability (BEP) for binary differential and
coherent PSK is

………(1)

………...(2)
 In a fading environment, the received SNR is a
random variable. For a Rayleigh fading channel,
its probability density function can be proved to
be

…………
(3)

 In this case, the BEP for differential and

coherent PSK can be directly calculated from eq
(1),(2)&(3)
 whichimplies that coherent detection provides
a 3-dB SNR gain compared with differential
detection
Fig: BEP of differential and coherent PSK for Rayleigh
fading
channel
OFDM Systems with Channel
Estimator:
 OFDMsystem with channel estimation is as
shown in the figure.

 An error correction code across tones is

utilized in the system to correct the errors
resulting from frequency selective fading.

 Sincethe
phase of each tone can be obtained
by the channel estimator, coherent PSK
modulation is used here to enhance the
system performance.
 For a diversity receiver, the signal from the m-th
antenna at the k-th tone of the n-th block can be
expressed as

where is additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN)

from the m-th antenna at the k-th subcarrier of the
n-th block, which is assumed to be with zero-mean
and variance p.

 is the frequency response at the k-th tone of

the n-th block corresponding to the m-th antenna
 With knowledge of the channel parameters,
can be estimated as , by a maximal
ratio combiner (MRC)
 Basicallythree types of channel
Estimations are used:

• Decision-Directed Channel Estimation

• Pilot-Symbol-Aided Estimation

• MIMO Channel Estimation

Decision-Directed Channel
Estimation:
Channel estimation that exploits the
decided (sliced) symbols as reference is
called the decision-directed channel
estimation.

Ifan ideal reference, can be generated

in Fig(a), then a temporal estimation of
can be obtained as
where is the temporal estimation
error due to AWGN and it can be
expressed as
MMSE Estimation using Frequency
Domain Correlation:
 N x 1 temporally estimated parameter vector
can be denoted as

where the superscript T denotes the transpose

of a vector or a matrix.
Then,

Where are the N x 1 channel frequency

response vector and the N x 1 temporal
estimation error vector, respectively
 They are defined as

 Exploiting the frequency domain correlation

of channel parameters, a better estimate
can be obtained

 where C is a N x N estimator coeficient

matrix.
 For MMSE estimation, the matrix C is determined
by minimizing the mean-square error,

 using the orthogonality principle, the equation

reduces to

…………….(a)

where the superscript H denotes the Hermitian of

a vector or a matrix.
 The expectations in eqn (a) can be
expressed as

where p is the variance of temporal channel

estimation error that can be expressed as
 is the frequency domain correlation
matrix of channel parameters, defined as

 The elements of represent the frequency

domain correlation of the channel defined as
 From eqn (a), the coefficient matrix for the
MMSE estimator is

 and the MMSE estimate of the channel is

 From the above expressions, we see that an

MMSE frequency domain channel estimator
can be obtained once the correlation of
channel frequency response at different
frequencies is known.
MMSE Estimation using both Time
and Frequency Domain Correlations:
 Since the channel parameters, , are correlated for
different OFDM blocks and frequencies, instead of
using only the frequency domain correlation, an
improved MMSE channel estimator can be
constructed exploiting both time and frequency
corrections.

 In this case, the estimated channel parameter

vector can be expressed as

where is a K x K matrix sequence that is chosen

to minimize
 The coefficients of the estimator are
determined by
…………………
(b)
 In the above expression,

Where is a stable one-sided Fourier

transform

which is uniquely determined by

 Robust Estimation:

 Once the channel statistics, such as the time and

frequency domain correlations, are known, the
optimum channel estimator can be designed.

 However, in mobile wireless links, the channel

statistics depend on the particular environments
like indoor or outdoor, urban or suburban, and
change with time.

 Here we will develop a design approach to robust

estimator that is insensitive to channel statistics.
 If an MMSE channel estimator is designed
according to time and frequency domain
correlations and respectively, then its
coefficients are determined from
eqn(b) by

 For a channel with time and frequency

domain correlations and , ,the MSE of
the estimator will be
 To understand the effect of mismatch in time
and frequency domains,we first consider an
estimator matching the correlation in time
domain and mismatching in frequency domain,
i.e.,

 for k= 1,. . . , N, and the time-domain

correlation rt [m] is mismatched,then the MSE
of the estimator will be
 where is the MSE of the optimal
estimator that is determined by