Channel Estimation Based in Comb-Type Pilots Arrangement for OFDM System over Time Varying Channel

Abstract

Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) has been recently applied widely in wireless communication systems, due to its high data rate, transmission capability with high bandwidth, efficiency and its robustness to multipath delay .Channel estimation is an essential problem in OFDM system. Pilot-aided channel estimation has been used; a good choice of the pilot pattern should match the channel behavior both in time and frequency domains. We explored comb pilot arrangements. The advantage for comb type pilots arrangement in channel estimation is the ability to track the variation of the channel caused by doppler frequency, it is observed that the doppler effect can be reduced, and so this will increase the system mobility. Kalman and Least Square (LS) estimators have been proposed to estimate the Channel Frequency Response (CFR) at the pilots location, then CFR at data sub channels are obtained by mean of interpolation between estimates at pilot locations. Different types of interpolations have been used such as; low pass interpolation; spline cubic interpolation and linear interpolation. Kalman estimation has better performance than LS estimation. The estimators perform about the same for SNR lower than 10 dB. The performances of all schemes have been compared by finding Bit Error Rate (BER), where BPSK modulation scheme was used.