A Low-Complexity Channel Estimation Based on a Least-Squares Algorithm in OFDM Systems

Abstract

As the channel frequency responses (CFRs) at virtual pilot subcarriers are assumed to be zero, the estimated CFRs will have a leakage effect for discrete Fourier transform (DFT)-based channel estimation in OFDM systems. The CFRs at odd pilot subcarriers and even pilot subcarriers are related if the number of maximum channel delay points is smaller than or equal to half the number of pilots (including virtual pilots). According to this correlation, we propose a low-complexity least-squares (LS) method to estimate the CFRs at virtual even and odd pilot subcarriers, respectively. This will solve the problem of the leakage effect in DFT-based channel estimation. The proposed method does not need to know the statistical properties of the channel or insert extra pilots as with some estimation methods. Furthermore, although this method has less computation than the LS method, both have almost the same channel estimation efficiency in simulation. The channel estimation efficiency of our proposed method is still similar to that of the LS method, even if the number of maximum channel delay points is greater than half the number of pilots. Therefore, the proposed low-complexity method is very suitable for equalizer hardware implementation.