Doubly-selective MMSE channel estimation and ICI mitigation for OFDM systems

In orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) systems, it is generally assumed that the channel response is static in an OFDM symbol period. However, the assumption does not hold in high-mobility environments. As a result, intercarrier interference (ICI) is induced and the system performance is degraded. A simple remedy for this problem is the application of the zero-forcing (ZF) and minimum mean square error (MMSE) equalizers. Unfortunately, the direct ZF method requires the inversion of an NxN ICI matrix, where N is the number of subcarriers. When N is large, the computational complexity can become prohibitively high. As for the direct MMSE method, in addition to an NxN matrix inverse, it requires an extra NxN matrix multiplication, making the required computational complexity higher compared to the direct ZF method. In this dissertation, we first propose a low-complexity ZF method to solve the problem in single-input-single-output (SISO) OFDM systems. The main idea is to explore the special structure inherent in the ICI matrix and to apply Newton's iteration for matrix inversion. With our formulation, fast Fourier transforms (FFTs) can be used in the iterative process, reducing the complexity from O(N^3) to O(Nlog_2 N) . Also, the required number of the iteration is typically one or two. We also analyze the convergence behavior of the proposed method and derive the theoretical output signal-to-interference-noise-ratio (SINR). For the MMSE method, we first reformulate the MMSE solution in a way that the extra matrix multiplication can be avoided. Similar to the ZF method, we then exploit the structure of the ICI matrix and apply Newton's iteration to reduce the complexity of the matrix inversion. For a multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) OFDM system, the required complexity of the ZF and MMSE methods becomes more intractable. We then manage to extend the proposed ZF and MMSE methods for SISO-OFDM systems to MIMO-OFDM systems. It turns out that the computational complexity can be reduced even more significantly. Simulation results show that the performance of the proposed methods is almost as good as that of the direct ZF and MMSE methods, while the required computational complexity is reduced dramatically. Finally, we explore the application of the proposed methods in mobility-induced ICI mitigation for OFDM multiple access (OFDMA) systems, and in carrier frequency offset (CFO) induced ICI mitigation for OFDMA uplink systems. As that in OFDM systems, the proposed methods can reduce the required computational complexity, effectively.

It is well known that Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) systems suffer from intercarrier interference (ICI) in mobile environment due to loss of orthogonality among subcarriers caused by Doppler shifts. There exist many ICI mitigation techniques in the literature to improve the performance of OFDM systems. However, most of the existing ICI mitigation techniques assume the OFDM transmission bandwidth is narrow enough that the frequency offsets on all subcarriers are identical. In a wideband OFDM transmission or a non-contiguous OFDM spanning over large bandwidth, the Doppler shifts on different subcarriers are different, especially in high speed aerial vehicle communication systems. In this paper, we analyze the wideband OFDM system in high mobility environment where the frequency offsets vary from subcarrier to subcarrier. We then propose a novel ICI cancellation scheme to eliminate the ICI effect and offer the wideband OFDM system significantly improved BER performance. Simulation results in AWGN channel and multipath fading channel confirm the effectiveness of the proposed scheme in the presence of frequency offset and time variations in the channel, offering the best BER performance available which matches the BER performance of wideband OFDM system without ICI. To our knowledge, this paper is the first to address the ICI problem of varying frequency offsets across subcarriers in wideband OFDM system.

One of the challenges in designing orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) systems is their inherent sensitivity to any frequency shift in the signal. A frequency offset between the local oscillators at the transmitter and receiver causes a single frequency shift in the signal, while a time-varying channel can cause a spread of frequency shifts known as the Doppler spread. Frequency shifts ruin the orthogonality of OFDM subcarriers and cause intercarrier interference (ICI); therefore, quickly diminishing the performance of the system. ICI self-cancellation schemes have been proposed to reduce the sensitivity of OFDM systems to frequency shifts. These schemes use signal processing and frequency domain coding to reduce the amount of ICI generated as a result of frequency shifts, with little additional computational complexity. These methods can be used as an alternative to the fine frequency-offset estimation methods to battle oscillator frequency offset or simply be used as an ICI mitigation technique when the system is operating over time-varying channels. We propose a general ICI self-cancellation scheme that can be implemented through windowing at the transmitter and receiver. We show that the previously proposed self-cancellation schemes are equivalent to special cases of this method. Through theoretical analysis of the signal-to-interference ratio and bit-error rate and the use of Monte Carlo simulations, we demonstrate that the proposed system considerably outperforms the existing systems in the presence of frequency offset or time variations in the channel. We consider both coherent and noncoherent systems.

The time reversal (TR) technique combined with the ultra-wideband (UWB) system offers a new potential for decreasing the cost and complexity of the UWB receivers. In spite of TR–UWB's good performance in perfect channel state information (CSI), it is very sensitive to the channel estimation error. The effect of channel imperfection on the TR–UWB system is considered in this paper. At first, based on a minimum mean square error (MMSE) equalizer receiver, a prefilter is calculated in closed form to improve the performance of the TR–UWB system in an imperfect CSI scenario. Furthermore, for comparison purposes, a similar calculation for prefilter is carried out based on a simple matched filter (MF) receiver. Then, in order to improve the MF receiver performance, a two-stage iteration-based algorithm is developed. The initial value for this iteration-based improved algorithm is considered to be a prefilter which is calculated in the TR–UWB system with MMSE equalizer. This optimized algorithm causes the channel estimation error in the TR–UWB system to become zero in some steps. Finally, exhaustive simulations are done to demonstrate the performance advantage attained by the improved algorithm.

This paper observes the inter-carrier interference (ICI) by Doppler effect in time domain in orthogonal frequency division multiplexing systems. This observation allows us to propose a new time domain two-stage equalization scheme that iteratively cancels the ICl. The proposed scheme consists of the following two stages: First, we apply low-complexity linear minimum mean squared error (MMSE) employing partial rank of time impulse response matrix to shorten the ICI components into diagonal region. Second, we propose new parallel interference cancellation with hard decision feedback to remove the residual ICI. Performance evaluations and complexity analyses show that the bit error rate and the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio performances of the proposed scheme are very close to those of the classical frequency domain linear MMSE equalization scheme with much reduced complexity

An orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is one of the effective techniques used in wireless communications. In OFDM systems, channel impairments due to multipath dispersive wireless channels can cause deep fades in wireless channels. The OFDM receiver also requires an accurate and computationally efficient channel state information when coherent detection is involved. Therefore, it needs a good robust estimation method of the channel in wireless communication for OFDM systems. And one of these channel estimation methods is minimum mean square error (MMSE) channel estimation. MMSE channel estimation one most used method in OFDM systems. In this work we enhanced robustness of MMSE channel estimation by using it in base of quasi-cyclic low density parity check (QC-LDPC) coded OFDM system.

Based on the space alternating generalized expectation maximization (SAGE) technique, and the ordered serial interference cancellation (OSIC) algorithm, an improved low-complexity inter-carrier interference (ICI) mitigation scheme, named SAGE-OSIC, is proposed for high mobile orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems, where the subcarriers are updated in series, according to the order of the decreasing signal to interference plus noise ratio (SINR) or signal to noise ratio (SNR). The computational complexity is investigated, and simulation studies are concluded over multipath fading and rapidly time-varying channels. It is indicated that the proposed SAGE-OSIC scheme significantly outperforms the existing low-complexity ICI mitigation methods based on SAGE, without any increase in the computational complexity, especially for the large Doppler shifts in highly mobile environments. Furthermore, it can also be concluded that the performance of the proposed SAGE-OSIC approaches that of the vertical Bell laboratory layered space-time (VBLAST) scheme, which demands very high computation.

ABSTRACTWhile inter-symbol interference is not of concern, inter-carrier interference that is caused by carrier frequency offset (CFO) is more concerned in orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems. The estimation of channel impulse response (CIR) is another important parameter of interest in the system. Recently, a number of approaches for the joint estimation of CFO and CIR in OFDM systems have been proposed in the literature, and most of them are traditional maximum-likelihood-based approaches. In this paper, we propose a number of mixture cost-reference particle filtering (CRPF) approaches for joint estimation of CIR and CFO, and a couple of them can be applied without the knowledge of both state and measurement noise statistics. Conventional least mean squares algorithm or recursive least squares algorithm is jointly employed with recently developed CRPF for nonlinear and multiple parameters estimation in OFDM systems. The computer simulation results show that mixture CRPFs are more robust against particle impoverishment (PI) problem than standard mixture particle filtering (PF) and mixture regularized PF (RPF) approaches although RPF was particularly developed to tackle the PI problem. In this paper, we investigate a number of mixture PF approaches including ones that do not need the information of noise statistics for the joint estimation of CFO and channel in OFDM systems.

Equalisation is one of the most important algorithms to improve the Bit-Error-Rate (BER) performance in communication systems. In general, equalisation can be classified into two categories: linear and non-linear equalisation. The linear equalisers include Zero Forcing (ZF), and Minimum Mean Square Error (MMSE) equalisers. The non-linear equalisers include ZF and MMSE equalisers that are based on Successive Interference Cancellation (SIC). The ZF equaliser suffers from noise enhancement. The MMSE equaliser can mitigate the noise enhancement using the estimated Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR). The ZF-SIC and MMSE-SIC equalisers suffer from error propagation, and high computational complexity, respectively. In this paper, the Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) system is modulated and demodulated using Inverse Discrete Wavelet Transform (IDWT), and DWT instead of Inverse Discrete Fourier Transform (IDFT) and DFT, respectively. Also, we propose a Joint Low-complexity Regularised ZF-SIC (JLRZF-SIC) equaliser that jointly performs the equalisation, and Carrier Frequency Offset (CFO) compensation with lower complexity using banded matrix approximation. The proposed JLRZF-SIC equaliser can accomplish the equalisation, and CFO compensation processes with low-complexity compared to the corresponding MMSE-SIC equaliser. Simulation results show that the proposed JLRZF-SIC equaliser outperforms different linearand non-linear equalisers.

OFDM(Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing) 시스템에서 직교 불균형 문제는 송수신기의 front-end에서 발생하며, 성상도에 영향을 주게 되어 BER(Bit Error Rate)을 증가시킨다. 또한, 위상 잡음은 송수신시 국부 발진기에서 발생되는 잡음으로 각 부반송파의 직교성을 깨뜨림으로써 시스템 성능을 크게 저하시킨다. 기존 방식인 PNS(Phase Noise Suppression) 알고리즘은 이러한 위상 잡음을 효과적으로 제거하는 방법이지만 직교 불균형 이동시에 적용되면 오히려 성능이 감소된다. 본 논문에서는 OFDM 시스템의 수신기에서 하향 변환 시 발생하는 직교 불균형과 위상 잡음의 영향을 분석하고, 수신기 FFT(Fast Fourier Transform) 후단에서 파일럿 심볼을 사용하여 CPE를 먼저 제거하고 직교 불균형과 위상 잡음의 성분을 검출하여 등화기의 판정 기준으로 사용하여 보상하는 방법을 제시하였다. 또, 다른 기존 방식들은 FFT 후단에서 추정하고 피드백 시키거나 프리엠블과 같은 시퀀스를 사용하는 방식이지만, 본 논문에서는 FFT 후단에서 MMSE 등화기만을 사용하여 제거하므로 기존의 방법보다 복잡도가 줄어든다. 기존의 위상 잡음 제거 방식에 ICI(Inter Carrier Interference) 제거 기능을 추가하고 직교 불균형 성분을 추출하여 MMSE(Minimum Mean Square Error) 과정 중에 적응 forgetting factor를 적용하면 성능 개선과 직교 불균형 성분의 영향이 줄어들며 성능이 개선됨을 보인다. In the OFDM system, IQ imbalance problem happens at the RF front-end of transceiver, which degrades the BER(bit error rate) performance because it affects the constellation in the received signal. Also, phase noise is generated in the local oscillator of transceivers and it destroys the orthogonality between the subcarriers. Conventional PNS algorithm is effective for phase noise suppression, but it is not useful anymore when there are jointly IQ(In-phase and Quadrature) imbalance and phase noise. Therefore, in this paper, we analyze the effect of IQ imbalance and phase noise generated in the down-conversion of the receiver. Then, we estimate and compensate the IQ imbalance and phase noise at the same time. Compared with the conventional method that IQ imbalance after IFFT is estimated and compensated in front of FFT via the feedback, this proposed method extracts and compensates effect of IQ imbalance after FFT stage. In case IQ imbalance and phase noise exist at the same time, we can decrease complexity because it is needless to use elimination of IQ imbalance in time domain and training sequences and preambles. Also, this method shows that it reduces the ICI and CPE component using adaptive forgetting factor of MMSE after FFT.

Orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) is robust against frequency selective fading because of the increase of the symbol duration. However, the time-varying nature of the channel causes inter-carrier interference (ICI) which destroys the orthogonal of sub-carriers and degrades the system performance severely. To alleviate the detrimental effect of ICI, there is a need for ICI mitigation within one OFDM symbol. We propose an iterative Inter-Carrier Interference (ICI) estimation and cancellation technique for OFDM systems based on regularized constrained total least squares. In the proposed scheme, ICI aren’t treated as additional additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN). The effect of Inter-Carrier Interference (ICI) and inter-symbol interference (ISI) on channel estimation is regarded as perturbation of channel. We propose a novel algorithm for channel estimation o based on regularized constrained total least squares. Computer simulations show that significant improvement can be obtained by the proposed scheme in fast fading channels.

In minimum mean squared error (MMSE) based turbo equalization, the decoder's extrinsic information is used as the MMSE equalizer's prior information. In order to improve the performance, the combined prior information which consists of the whole decoder's extrinsic information and the partial decoder's full information in the last iteration, is used by the MMSE equalizer. Meanwhile, the MMSE equalizer is lead by matched filter as a preprocessor to reduce the complexity. The extrinsic information transfer (EXIT) chart analysis and simulation results show that the performance of the proposed scheme is much better than that of the conventional turbo equalizer.

Channel estimation and synchronization are considered the most challenging issues in Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) system. OFDM is highly affected by synchronization errors that cause reduction in subcarriers orthogonality, leading to significant performance degradation. The synchronization errors cause two issues: Symbol Time Offset (STO), which produces inter symbol interference (ISI) and Carrier Frequency Offset (CFO), which results in inter carrier interference (ICI). The aim of the research is to simulate Comb type pilot based channel estimation for OFDM system showing the effect of pilot numbers on the channel estimation performance and propose a modified estimation method for STO with less number of pilot to mitigate ISI effect. Channel estimation is simulated for different pilot number with 16QAM modulation in Ped-A Rayleigh channel. The STO effect assumed less than the cyclic prefix length to minimize ISI and maintain the orthogonality between subcarriers. The simulation results show that the high number of pilots are needed to achieve good channel estimation in case no synchronization used while similar results are achieved with smaller number of pilots if the propose modification on the synchronization method are used aligned with the channel estimation. The proposed system is evaluated in terms of BER and SNR.

In comparison to Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM), Wavelet Packet Modulation (WPM) offers much lower side lobes in transmitted signal, which reduces inter-carrier interference (ICI) and narrowband interference (NBI). It is also spectrally efficient since it does not utilize cyclic prefix (CP), nevertheless, it requires an efficient equalization technique to counter the inter symbol interference (ISI) and ICI created by the channel. In this paper, performance comparison of OFDM and WPM for several multipath wireless channels is presented. We propose a novel application of zero-forcing (ZF) and minimum mean square error (MMSE) algorithms as time-domain channel equalization techniques for WPM systems. It is shown that, for a multipath wireless channel, WPM using MMSE-equalizer has a better bit error rate (BER) performance as compared to ZF-equalizer in WPM, as well as OFDM system.

In the context of gridless optical multicarrier systems, we propose a method for intercarrier interference (ICI) mitigation which allows bit error correction in scenarios of nonspectral flatness between the subcarriers composing the multicarrier system and sub-Nyquist carrier spacing. We propose a hybrid ICI mitigation technique which exploits the advantages of signal equalization at both levels: the physical level for any digital and analog pulse shaping, and the bit-data level and its ability to incorporate advanced correcting codes. The concatenation of these two complementary techniques consists of a nondata-aided equalizer applied to each optical subcarrier, and a hard-decision forward error correction applied to the sequence of bits distributed along the optical subcarriers regardless of prior subchannel quality assessment as performed in orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing modulations for the implementation of the bit-loading technique. The impact of the ICI is systematically evaluated in terms of bit-error-rate as a function of the carrier frequency spacing and the roll-off factor of the digital pulse-shaping filter for a simulated 3×32-Gbaud single-polarization quadrature phase shift keying Nyquist-wavelength division multiplexing system. After the ICI mitigation, a back-to-back error-free decoding was obtained for sub-Nyquist carrier spacings of 28.5 and 30 GHz and roll-off values of 0.1 and 0.4, respectively.