ARTICLE IN PRESS

Signal Processing 88 (2008) 1002–1016

www.elsevier.com/locate/sigpro

A novel simplified channel tracking method for MIMO–OFDM

systems with null sub-carriers
Hyoung-Goo Jeona, Erchin Serpedinb,
a
Department of Information Communication Engineering, Dongeui University, Busan, Republic of Korea
b
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Texas A&M University College Station, TX 77843-3128, USA
Received 10 April 2007; received in revised form 7 August 2007; accepted 19 October 2007
Available online 26 November 2007

Abstract

This paper proposes an efficient scheme to track the time variant channel induced by multi-path Rayleigh fading in
mobile wireless multiple input multiple output–orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (MIMO–OFDM) systems with
null sub-carriers. In the proposed method, a blind channel response predictor is designed to cope with the time variant
channel. The proposed channel tracking scheme consists of a frequency domain estimation approach that is coupled with a
minimum mean square error (MMSE) time domain estimation method, and does not require any matrix inverse
calculation during each OFDM symbol. The main attributes of the proposed scheme are its reduced computational
complexity and good tracking performance of channel variations. The simulation results show that the proposed method
exhibits superior performance than the conventional channel tracking method [Y.G. Li, N. Seshadri, S. Ariyavisitakul,
Channel estimation for OFDM systems with transmitter diversity in mobile wireless channels, IEEE J. Sel. Areas
Commun. 17 (March 1999) 461–471] in time varying channel environments. At a Doppler frequency of 100 Hz and bit
error rates (BER) of 104 , signal-to-noise power ratio (E b =N 0 ) gains of about 2.5 dB are achieved relative to the
conventional channel tracking method [Y.G. Li, N. Seshadri, S. Ariyavisitakul, Channel estimation for OFDM systems
with transmitter diversity in mobile wireless channels, IEEE J. Sel. Areas Commun. 17 (March 1999) 461–471]. At a
Doppler frequency of 200 Hz, the performance difference between the proposed method and conventional one becomes
much larger.
r 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Channel; Estimation; MIMO; OFDM; Tracking; Fading; Doppler

1. Introduction width since different data streams are transmitted

The multiple input multiple output (MIMO)
technique represents an efficient method to increase
data transmission rate without increasing band-
Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 979 458 2287;
fax: +1 979 862 4630.
E-mail addresses: hgjeon@deu.ac.kr (H.-G. Jeon),
serpedin@ece.tamu.edu (E. Serpedin).
from each transmit antenna [1]. Recently, orthogo-
nal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) has
been effectively used for transmitting high speed
data in multi-path fading channel environments. In
OFDM, the high speed data stream is processed in
parallel and transmitted by N (in general, a power
of 2) orthogonal sub-carriers. The high spectral
efficiency of OFDM and its robustness to multi-
path fading channel environments are the main

0165-1684/$ - see front matter r 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.sigpro.2007.10.017
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
H.-G. Jeon, E. Serpedin / Signal Processing 88 (2008) 1002–1016
reasons for its widespread usage in high bit-rate
transmissions such as digital audio broadcasting
(DAB), digital video broadcasting (DVB) and
wireless local area networks (WLAN) [2]. The
combined transmission method of MIMO–OFDM
has attracted a lot of attention as a new data
transmission method in high speed data rate
systems. In MIMO–OFDM receivers, the estimated
channel frequency response is used to separate the
mixed signals received from multiple antennas. An
important aspect is the fact that the performance of
MIMO–OFDM receivers highly depend on the
accuracy of the channel estimator.
Thus far, numerous studies for channel estima-
tion in MIMO–OFDM systems have been reported
(see e.g., [3–10]). Among the most notable results, Li
proposed a MMSE channel estimation method [3]
that exhibits good accuracy. However, this method
is computationally very complex due to the inverse
matrix calculation. In [6], by exploiting the correla-
tion of the subcarrier responses, Minn et al.
proposed a low complexity channel estimation
method which reduced the inverse matrix size by
half. However, Minn et al. method may cause
channel estimation errors in large delay spread
environments. Li also proposed a simplified channel
estimation method which required no matrix inver-
sion [4]. However, as mentioned in [6], if null sub-
carriers are used, Qii ½n of [4] would not be the
identity matrix, and there may be some performance
degradation according to the number of null sub-
carriers. Since real OFDM systems have null sub-
carriers in the guard band, a low complexity channel
estimation method considering null sub-carriers is
still needed.
As a possible solution to these problems, we are
proposing a novel simplified channel tracking
method that relies on a blind channel predictor.
The proposed method does not require prior
channel information or matrix inversion calculation
at all. In addition, the proposed method can
effectively track the nonlinear time varying channel
by using a piecewise linear model. To reduce its
computational complexity while maintaining a good
tracking accuracy, the proposed channel tracking
scheme is built by coupling a frequency domain
estimation approach with an MMSE time domain
channel estimation approach.
The remainder of this paper is organized as
follows. In Section 2, the MIMO–OFDM system
and channel model are briefly described. Section 3
introduces the proposed channel tracking method.
1003
In Section 4, the mean square error (MSE) and
computational complexity of the proposed channel
tracking scheme are assessed. The performance of
the proposed method is corroborated by computer
simulations in Section 5. Finally, Section 6 con-
cludes the paper.
2. Channel and MIMO–OFDM system description
The channel impulse response of the mobile
wireless channel [3,6] can be modeled by
X
L1
hðt; tÞ ¼ ak ðtÞdðt  tk Þ, (1)
k¼0
where ak ðtÞ denotes the complex gain of the kth
path, tk represents the delay of the kth path, L is the
number of the multi-paths in the channel and dðtÞ
stands for the impulse function. The frequency
response at time t is given by
Z 1 X
L1
Hðt; f Þ9 hðt; tÞ ej2pf t dt ¼ ak ðtÞ ej2pf tk .
1 k¼0
ð2Þ
Considering the motion of the mobile station, the
path gains ak ðtÞs are modeled to be independent
wide-sense stationary, narrow band complex Gaus-
sian processes and to have different average powers
s2k . With tolerable leakage, the channel frequency
response can be expressed as [3]
X
L 0 1
H½l; k9HðlðT f þ T g Þ; kDf Þ ¼ h½l; nW kn
N , (3)
n¼0
where h½l; n9hðlðT f þT g Þ; nts Þ, W N 9 expðj2p= NÞ,
L0 stands for the channel length and depends on the
time dispersion of the wireless channel, N is the
number of tones and the fast Fourier transforma-
tion/inverse fast Fourier transformation (FFT/
IFFT) size, T f and Df denote the OFDM symbol
period and sub-carrier spacing of the OFDM
system, respectively, T g represents the guard time
ðT g 9T f =4Þ and ts is the sample interval given by
ts ¼ 1=ðNDf Þ.
In a MIMO–OFDM system, the output signal at
each Rx (receive) antenna is a mixed signal
consisting of the data streams coming from all Tx
(transmit) antennas. If the channel response
does not change during one OFDM symbol
and the cyclic prefix is longer than the channel
response length, the receive signal at the jth Rx
antenna can be expressed in the frequency domain

1004 H.-G. Jeon, E. Serpedin / Signal Processing 88 (2008) 1002–1016
as follows:
X
Nt
Rj ½l; k ¼ H ij ½l; kX i ½l; k þ W j ½l; k,
i¼1
j ¼ 1; . . . ; N r ; 0pkpN  1,
where H ij ½l; k is the channel frequency response
corresponding to the kth sub-carrier and the lth
OFDM symbol transmitted between the ith Tx
antenna ði ¼ 1; . . . ; N t Þ and the jth Rx antenna.
Also, let N, N r and N t denote the number of sub-
carriers, the number of Rx antennas, and the
number of Tx antennas, respectively. X i ½l; k de-
notes the data transmitted from the ith Tx antenna
on the kth sub-carrier at the lth OFDM symbol.
W j ½l; k represents the additive white Gaussian noise
(AWGN) at the jth receiver antenna, with zero
mean and variance s2n , and is assumed to be
uncorrelated for different j’s, k’s, or l’s. Under the
assumption that the channel stays constant within
one OFDM symbol duration but the channel
changes from symbol to symbol, we will develop a
channel tracking scheme with improved perfor-
mance relative to the conventional scheme [3]. The
computer simulations, which assume realistic Ray-
leigh fading conditions (that are not limited to the
block fading assumption) [11], corroborate the
superior performance of the proposed channel
tracking scheme. The indices n and k denote time
and frequency-domain indices, respectively. The
symbols a, ~ a^ and a denote the temporally estimated
value, the estimated value and the predicted value of
Delay
device
rj [l,n] Rj [l,k] MISO S˜ij [l,k]
FFT to
SISO
conversion
MISO
X˜i [l,k]
Pre-ML
detector
Fig. 1. Block diagram of the proposed channel tracking method.
ARTICLE IN PRESS
the variable a, respectively. In this system model,
time synchronization is assumed to be perfect, and
the maximum likelihood (ML) detection method is
used. Tx antennas transmit a long preamble
ð4Þ consisting of two training symbols before data
transmission mode, as WiBro and WLAN systems
do [2,12]. It is assumed that in the data transmission
mode, N d OFDM symbols are transmitted con-
secutively in each Tx antenna. For unbiased
performance comparison of channel tracking algo-
rithms, no channel coding is used.
3. Proposed channel estimation method
Since the wireless channel is time-variant, it is
necessary to track the channel response continu-
ously. In addition, since the received signal at each
Rx antenna in MIMO–OFDM systems is a multi-
ple-input single-output (MISO) signal, a time
domain channel estimation cannot be directly
applied on the received signal. In this paper, we
propose a low complexity adaptive channel estima-
tion method based on a blind channel prediction
scheme that is suitable for time variant channel
environments. The conceptual block diagram of
the proposed channel tracking scheme is shown in
Fig. 1. Before channel estimation, the frequency
domain MISO signal received at the jth Rx antenna
(Rj ½l; k) is converted into the desired single-input
single-output (SISO) signal (See Section 3.2 for the
definition of desired SISO signal) by canceling the
Freq. ˜ ij [l,k]
H Time Hˆij [l,k]
domain domain Post ML
IFFT FFT
Channel Channel ˆij [l,n]
h detector
Est. Estimation
SISO
Hij [l,k] Channel
predictor
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
H.-G. Jeon, E. Serpedin / Signal Processing 88 (2008) 1002–1016 1005

other interfering signals coming from the other Tx
antennas. When pre-demodulating and converting
the MISO signal Rj ½l; k into the desired SISO
signal, the predicted channel response H ij ½l; k is
used to cope with the time variant channel instead
of using the previously estimated channel response
H^ ij ½l  1; k. Once the SISO signal is obtained,
temporal channel estimation in frequency domain
is carried out to remove the inverse matrix calcula-
tion required in the following time domain channel
estimation. In the time domain channel estimation
block, the channel impulse response is obtained by
minimizing a MSE cost function, considering the
presence of null sub-carriers.
3.1. A blind channel response predictor design
In this paper, we design a blind channel predictor
by exploiting a piecewise linear model for the time
varying channel. Fig. 2 shows an example of the
time varying channel frequency response at the kth
sub-carrier. The channel frequency response of each
sub-carrier, H ij ½l; k, varies nonlinearly with time.
However, the adjacent channel frequency responses
H ij ½l; k and H ij ½l  1; k present a certain correla-
tion with each other and this relation is expressed as
rate. For example, a channel with a short coherence
time will have a small M, and vice versa. In the
piecewise linear model, the condition Dij ½l; k ’
Dij ½l  1; k is assumed. Therefore, from (5) we infer
that H ij ½l; k ’ H ij ½l  1; k þ Dij ½l  1; k. If we
know H^ ij ½l  1; k and D^ ij ½l  1; k at the time
instant corresponding to the lth symbol, then
the predicted channel response H ij ½l; k can be
obtained as
H ij ½l; k9H^ ij ½l  1; k þ D^ ij ½l  1; k. (6)
Referring to Fig. 2 of the piecewise linear model,
D^ ij ½l  1; k can be expressed by using the previously
estimated channel responses, since 2Dij ½l  1; k ’
H ij ½l  1; k  H ij ½l  3; k and Dij ½l  1; k ’
H ij ½l  2; k  H ij ½l  3; k. In the case where the
channel response varies linearly during the M
consecutive OFDM symbols, therefore, (6) can be
expressed by the linear combination of the ðM  1Þ
previously estimated channel responses as follows:
X
M1
H ij ½l; k9 om H^ ij ½l  m; k
m¼1
X
M1
¼ om ðH ij ½l  m; k þ Zij ½l  m; kÞ, ð7Þ
m¼1

H ij ½l; k ¼ H ij ½l  1; k þ Dij ½l; k, (5) where om is a weight value and Zij ½l; k9H^ ij ½l; k 
where Dij ½l; k denotes the difference between the H ij ½l; k and denotes the random channel esti-
channel frequency responses corresponding to lth mation error with zero mean and variance s2e (see
and ðl  1Þth symbols at the kth sub-carrier. If a Section 4.2). Let us define DH ij ½l; k9H ij ½l; k 
piecewise linear model [13] is used during the short H ij ½l; k as the channel response prediction random
time of some OFDM symbol periods as shown in error. The weight values can be found by minimiz-
Fig. 2, the nonlinear time varying channel frequency ing the following MSE cost function:
response H ij ½l; k can be treated as a linear model.
x½l; k9EfjDH ij ½l; kj2 g
Using the piecewise linear model, let us assume 8 2 9
that H ij ½l; k varies linearly during the time of the < X
M1  =
 
consecutive M OFDM symbols. The variable M can ¼ E H ij ½l; k  om H^ ij ½l  m; k . ð8Þ
: m¼1
 ;
be set according to the channel response changing
During the M OFDM symbols, H ij ½l; k ’
H ij ½l  m; k þ m  Dij ½l; k, 1pmoM. Therefore,
Channel
frequency (
Hij [l − 1,k] Hij [l ,k]
response
Hij[l − 2,k]
x½l; k ’ E jH ij ½l  M þ 1; k þ ðM  1ÞDij ½l; k

Hij [l − 3,k] Dij [l − 2,k] 2Dij [l − 1,k]

X
M1
 om ðH ij ½l  M þ 1; k
m¼1
Time(l )
þ ðM  1  mÞDij ½l; k
)
Piecewise linear model
þZij ½l  m; kÞj2
Fig. 2. Piecewise linear model for nonlinear time variant channel.
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
1006 H.-G. Jeon, E. Serpedin / Signal Processing 88 (2008) 1002–1016

( !
X
M1 the proposed predictor requires no additional
¼ 1 om H ij ½l  M þ 1; k training process and convergence time.
m¼1
! )2
X
M1
þ M 1 om ðM  1  mÞ Dij ½l; k 3.2. Conversion of MISO Rx signal into SISO
m¼1 desired signal
!
X
M1
þ s2e o2m . ð9Þ As mentioned in the previous section, it is
m¼1 efficient to estimate channel response after convert-
The weight values om can be determined by solving ing the MISO Rx signal into the SISO desired signal
qx½l; k=qom ¼ 0. However, since H½l  M þ 1; k, by canceling the interference signal coming from the
D½l; k and s2e are not given due to the blind other Tx antennas. The SISO desired signal between
estimation property, we cannotP solve the equation the ith Tx antenna and the jth Rx antenna is defined
directly. From (9), when M1 by S ij ½l; k9X i ½l; kH ij ½l; k ¼ X i ½l; kðH ij ½l  1; kþ
PM1 ð1  i¼1 om Þ ¼ 0 and
ðM  1  m¼1 om ðM  1  mÞÞ ¼ 0, the cost Dij ½l; kÞ. The temporally estimated SISO signal
function x½l; k can be minimized, and then S~ ij ½l  1; k is given by
P
x½l; k ’ s2e M1 2
m¼1 om . The surface of the cost func- X
Nt

tion is convex with respect to om . Therefore, om can S~ ij ½l; k ¼ Rj ½l; k  X~ m ½l; kH^ mj ½l  1; k
m¼1;mai
be numerically determined by finding the values
minimizing the cost function of Cðo1 ; o2 ; . . . ; oM1 Þ ¼ X i ½l; kH ij ½l; k þ N ij ½l; k, ð11Þ
P PN t
9 M1 m¼1 om
2
while satisfying the conditions 0
where N ij ½l; k9W j ½l; k þ m¼1;mai X m ½l; kDmj ½l; k
PM1 PM1
m¼1 o m ¼ 1 and m¼1 om ðM  1  mÞ ¼ M  1. and D0ij ½l; k is defined by D0ij ½l; k9H ij ½l; k  H^ ij
In this paper, the weight values om are obtained ½l  1; k, and X~ i ½l; k denotes the demodulated data
for M ¼ 4, 5 and 6, and the results are given as by using the previous channel response H^ ij ½l  1; k.
follows: For convenience, X i ½l; k ¼ X~ i ½l; k is assumed.
M ¼ 4; o1 ¼ 43; o2 ¼ 13; o3 ¼ 23, Since D0ij ½l; k is proportional to the channel varia-
tion, it can be seen from (11) that the faster the
x½l; k ’ 2:3s2e , channel variations are and the more Tx antennas
M ¼ 5; o1 ¼ 1; o2 ¼ 0:5; o3 ¼ 0, are used, the higher the channel estimation errors
o4 ¼ 0:5; x½l; k ’ 1:5s2e , are. Moreover, if the previous channel response
H^ mj ½l  1; k is used in fast time varying channel
M ¼ 6; o1 ¼ 0:8; o2 ¼ 0:5; o3 ¼ 0:25, environments, X i ½l; k ¼ X~ i ½l; k cannot be assumed
o4 ¼ 0:2; o5 ¼ 0:35; x½l; k ’ 1:11s2e . ð10Þ anymore. In that case, the noise term N ij ½l; k may
increase significantly. In this paper, in order to
It is assumed that the initial channel response
reduce the noise term in (11), the predicted channel
values H^ ij ½1; k and H^ ij ½2; k can be obtained by
response H ij ½l; k is used not only to cancel the
using the long preamble signal consisting of two
interference signal in the MISO Rx signal but also
consecutive training OFDM symbols, as is the case
to pre-demodulate X i ½l; k as shown in the block
with WiBro and WLAN systems. After processing
diagram of Fig. 1. Using H ij ½l; k and X i ½l; k, (11) is
the long preamble signal, we have two initial
revised as
channel response values H^ ij ½1; k and H^ ij ½2; k,
but no access yet to H^ ij ½3; k; . . . ; H^ ij ½1  M; k. X
Nt
For this reason, the initial condition is given as S~ ij ½l; k ¼ Rj ½l; k  X m ½l; kH mj ½l; k
H^ ij ½2; k ¼ H^ ij ½3; k ¼    ¼ H^ ij ½1  M; k. In the m¼1;mai

conventional channel estimation method [2], the ¼ X i ½l; kH ij ½l; k þ N 0ij ½l; k, ð12Þ
long preamble signal was averaged to reduce noise P
variance. It should be noted that in this paper, where N 0ij ½l; k9W j ½l; k þ N t
m¼1;mai X m ½l; kDH mj
however, the long preamble signal is used for ½l; k. For convenience, X i ½l; k ¼ X i ½l; k is assumed.
channel response prediction in time varying channel If there is no prediction error such that
environments. Since the proposed channel predictor DH ij ½l; k ¼ 0, then S~ ij ½l; k ¼ X i ½l; kH ij ½l; k þ W j
uses piecewise linear model, it can adaptively track a ½l; k, regardless of the channel response variation
nonlinearly varying channel response. In addition, and the number of Tx antennas.
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
H.-G. Jeon, E. Serpedin / Signal Processing 88 (2008) 1002–1016 1007

3.3. Joint frequency and time domain MMSE guard band. Note that estimating the channel
channel estimator response in the frequency domain removes the need
of calculating an inverse matrix in the next step of
The channel estimation methods [3,6] required time domain channel estimation employing an
inverse matrix calculation in every OFDM symbol. MMSE technique. The time domain channel esti-
As mentioned in [6], Qii ½n of [4] is not the identity mation is performed during the next step, by
matrix in the presence of null sub-carriers and non- considering all the null sub-carriers used in the
constant modulation. For this reason, Li’s simpli- guard band. The time domain channel estimate
fied method [4], which requires no matrix inversion, h^ij ½l; n can be found by minimizing the following
cannot be used in general MIMO–OFDM systems MSE cost function:
with null sub-carriers and employing non-constant
modulation. Therefore, our goal is to derive a novel Cðfh^ij ½l; ng; i ¼ 1; . . . ; N t Þ
low complexity channel estimation method which  2
X
N 1 X L0 
can be used in general MIMO–OFDM systems  ^ 
9 Y ij ½l; k nk
hij ½l; nW N Z½k . ð16Þ
while maintaining good performance. In this k¼0
 n¼0

section, we propose a frequency domain estimation
approach coupled with an MMSE method that h^ij ½l; n is the estimated channel impulse response
requires no inverse matrix calculation in every and can be determined by solving
symbol. In the proposed method, frequency domain ( )
channel estimation is carried out first such that the qCðfh^ij ½l; ngÞ 1 qCðfh^ij ½l; ngÞ qCðfh^ij ½l; ngÞ
subsequent MMSE estimator does not require a 9 j
qh^ij ½l; n0  2 qRðh^ij ½l; n0 Þ qIðh^ij ½l; n0 Þ
matrix inversion during any OFDM symbol. The
proposed method can be used in any MI- ¼ 0, ð17Þ
MO–OFDM system, regardless of null sub-carriers
and non-constant modulation. where RðÞ and IðÞ denote the real and imaginary
Referring to (12), considering the null sub- parts of a complex number, respectively, and
carriers and using the least squares (LS) method in n0 ¼ 0; 1; . . . ; L0 . Direct solving (17) results in
frequency domain, the temporally estimated chan- !
nel frequency response is given by X
N1 X
L0
Y ij ½l; k  h^ij ½l; nW kn
N Z½k Z½kW kn
N
0
¼ 0.
Y ij ½l; k ¼ ðS~ ij ½l; k=X i ½l; kÞZ½k k¼0 n¼0

¼ ðH ij ½l; k þ V ij ½l; kÞZ½k, ð13Þ (18)

where V ij ½l; k denotes the random estimation error Define

given by
X
N 1
X
Nt q½n9 Z½kW kn
N , (19)
V ij ½l; k ¼ X m ½l; kDH ij ½l; k k¼0
m¼1;mai
!,
þW j ½l; k X i ½l; k. ð14Þ X
N 1
yij ½l; n9 Y ij ½l; kZ½kW kn
N . (20)
k¼0
Z½k is a time invariant function to denote the
pattern of null sub-carriers used in the guard band Then, (18) can be expressed as
and is given by
8 X
L 0 1
>
> 1 if 1pkoN=2  g or h^ij ½l; nq½n0  n ¼ yij ½l; n0  (21)
>
>
< N=2 þ gokpN  1; n¼0
Z½k ¼ (15)
>
> 0 if k ¼ 0 or
>
> for i ¼ 1; . . . ; N t and n0 ¼ 0; 1; . . . ; L0 . Eq. (21) can
: N=2  gpkpN=2 þ g; be expressed in matrix form as
where index k ¼ 0 denotes the DC component and g
stands for the number of null sub-carriers in the Qh^ ij ½l ¼ yij ½l, (22)
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
1008 H.-G. Jeon, E. Serpedin / Signal Processing 88 (2008) 1002–1016

where be expressed as
0 1
q½0 q½1  q½1  L0  h^ ij ½l ¼ Q1 yij ½l ¼ hij ½l þ Q1 vij ½l. (31)
B C
B q½1 q½0  q½2  L0  C The MSE of the channel impulse response estimate
B C
Q9B .. .. .. C, can be given by
B . .  . C
@ A
q½L0  1 q½L0  2  q½0 MSE½l9Efkh^ ij ½l  hij ½lk2 g
(23) ¼ EfðQ1 vij ½lÞH Q1 vij ½lg
¼ TracefQ1 Efvij ½lvij ½lH gðQ1 ÞH g. ð32Þ
h^ ij ½l9ðh^ij ½l; 0; h^ij ½l; 1; . . . ; h^ij ½l; L0  1ÞT , (24) H
A generic entry of Efvij ½lvij ½l g is given by
( !
yij ½l ¼ ðyij ½l; 0; yij ½l; 1; . . . ; yij ½l; L0  1ÞT . (25) 
X
N 1
n1 k1
Efvij ½l; n1 vij ½l; n2 g ¼ E V ij ½l; k1 Z½k1 W N
Hence, the channel impulse response can be k1 ¼0
estimated by !)
X
N1
2 k2
 V ij ½l; k2 Z½k2 W þn
h^ ij ½l ¼ Q1 yij ½l. (26) k1 ¼0
N

Since matrix Q is a time invariant constant matrix X

N 1

determined by the null sub-carrier pattern, the ¼ EfV ij ½l; k1 V ij ½l; k2 g
k1 ;k2 ¼0
inverse matrix Q1 can be pre-calculated and stored
1 k 1 þn2 k 2
in the memory before beginning the channel Z½k1 Z½k2 W n
N , ð33Þ
tracking. Therefore, no explicit calculation of Q1
where n1 ; n2 ¼ 1; 2; . . . ; L0 . If we substitute (14) into
is required for every OFDM symbol. However, [3]
(33), Eq. (33) can be rewritten as
and [6] require inverse matrix calculation for every
OFDM symbol. Efvij ½l; n1 vij ½l; n2 g
(PN
X
N 1 t
m¼1;mai jX m ½l; kj
2

4. MSE calculation and complexity comparison ¼ 2

s2p
k¼0 jX i ½l; kj
)
4.1. MSE calculation s2n ðn1 n2 Þk
þ Z½kW N , ð34Þ
jX i ½l; kj2
In this section, we will derive the MSE of the P
proposed channel estimation scheme. From (20), where s2p 9EðjDH ij ½l; kj2 Þ ¼ s2e M1 2
m¼1 om and DH ij
one infers that ½l; k and W j ½l; k are assumed to be independent of
! each other. Hence, if a constant modulus modula-
X
N X
1 L 0 1
tion is used,
mk
yij ½l; n ¼ hij ½l; mW N þV ij ½l; k Z½kW nk
N  
k¼0 m¼0 s2n
Efvij ½lvij ½lH g ¼ ðN t  1Þs2p þ Q: ð35Þ
X
L 0 1
jX i ½l; kj2
¼ hij ½l; mq½n  m þ vij ½n; 0pnpL0 ,
m¼0 If no null sub-carriers are used, since Q ¼ NI,
 
ð27Þ L0 2 1
PN1 MSE½l ¼ ðN t  1Þsp þ . (36)
where vij ½n ¼ nk N SNR
k¼0 V ij ½l; kZ½kW N . Eq. (27) can
be expressed in matrix form as Given a SNR, the MSE½l is dependent on the
yij ½l ¼ Qhij ½l þ vij ½l, (28) prediction error, the channel response length and
the number of Tx antennas.
where
4.2. Mean and variance of random variable Zij ½l; k
hij ½l ¼ ðhij ½l; 0; hij ½l; 1; . . . ; hij ½l; L0  1ÞT , (29)
For convenient comprehension, let us assume
vij ½l ¼ ðvj ½l; 0; vj ½l; 1; . . . ; vij ½l; L0  1ÞT . (30)
that BPSK is used for X i ½l; k, then E½X i ½l; k ¼ 0.
From (28), the channel impulse response estimate X m ½l; k, DH ij ½l; k, W j ½l; k and X i ½l; k are indepen-
corresponding to Tx antenna i and Rx antenna j can dent of each other. It is clear that E½X m ½l; k ¼ 0,
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
H.-G. Jeon, E. Serpedin / Signal Processing 88 (2008) 1002–1016
E½X i ½l; k ¼ 0 and E½W j ½l; k ¼ 0. Therefore, it is
also clear that E½V ij ½l; k ¼ 0, where V ij ½l; k is given
by (14). From (31), the channel estimation error in
time domain can be expressed P as E½h^ ij ½l  hij ½l ¼
Q1 E½vij ½l. Since E½vij ½n ¼ N1 k¼0 E½V ij ½l; kZ½k
1
W nk N ¼ 0, Q E½v ij ½l ¼ 0. It means that the mean
of the channel estimation error in time domain is
zero. Since the channel frequency response estimate
H^ ij ½l; k is obtained by performing Fourier trans-
formation for the channel impulse response estimate
h^ij ½l; n, the mean of the channel estimation error in
frequency domain is also zero. That is, E½Zij ½l; k ¼
E½H^ ij ½l; k  H ij ½l; k ¼ 0.
The MSE of the channel frequency response in
the kth sub-carrier is defined by E½ðH^ ij ½l; k
H ij ½l; kÞ2  ¼ s2e . The total MSE of the channel
impulse response in time domain is equal to
MSE½l given by (36). When the channel impulse
response h^ij ½l; n is Fourier transformed to obtain
the channel frequency response H^ ij ½l; k, the total
MSE in time domain is equal to the total MSE in
frequency domain. Therefore, if there are N sub-
carriers in the OFDM system, then s2e ¼ MSE½l=N.
4.3. Computational complexity comparison
In this section, the computational complexities of
the schemes proposed in [3,6] and the method
proposed herein are compared briefly. The complex-
ity comparison will be focused on the channel
estimation based on the decision-directed estimation
method, as [6] did. Since Q1 can be pre-calculated,
Q1 calculation is not included in the complexity
comparison. Since Li’s simplified method [4] may
cause estimation error in MIMO–OFDM systems
with null sub-carrier and employing non-constant
Table 1
Evaluation of computational complexity for each method
Condition Method
Constant modulus with N u ¼ N Ref. [3]
Ref. [6]
Proposed
Constant modulus with N u aN Ref. [3]
Ref. [6]
Proposed
Non-constant modulus Ref. [3]
Ref. [6]
Proposed
1009
modulus modulations, Li’s simplified method will
not be discussed in this comparison. In the case of
two Tx and Rx antennas and N sub-carriers, the
channel estimation complexity for each method is
given in Table 1 (refer also to [6]). In Table 1, FFTN
denotes the number of multiplications required for
the FFT operation with size N. invðL0  L0 Þ stands
for the number of multiplications required for L0 
L0 matrix inversion. N u denotes the number of the
sub-carriers used. When N u ¼ N, no null sub-
carrier is used. The number of FFT operations for
Li method [3] can be easily obtained by referring to
Fig. 3 in [3]. Considering Eqs. (15) and (16) in [3],
the number of multiplications required for calculat-
ing hij ½l can be derived straightforwardly. The
calculation amount for Minn method [6] can be
obtained by considering the similarity with Li
method. Note that when N u ¼ N and constant
modulation is used, Qii ½n is a identity matrix. In
that case, Li’s method needs calculating only
invðL0  L0 Þ instead of calculating invð2L0  2L0 Þ.
From Table 1, we can see that the proposed method
has the lowest complexity among these methods,
regardless of the non-constant modulation and the
presence of null sub-carriers.
5. Performance evaluation
Computer simulations are carried out to evaluate
the performance of the proposed method. Two Tx
and two Rx antennas are used for the MI-
MO–OFDM system. There are a total of 128 sub-
carriers so that the FFT/IFFT size is 128. The DC
component sub-carrier is not used, and 10 and 9
sub-carriers on each end of the spectral band,
respectively, are used as guard band. The rest of 108
No. of complex multiplications and divisions
3N þ ð2L0 Þ2 þ 5FFTN þ invðL0  L0 Þ
4:5N þ 2ðL0 Þ2 þ 3FFTN=2 þ invðL0  L0 Þ
3N þ ð2L0 Þ2 þ 5FFTN
3N þ ð2L0 Þ2 þ 5FFTN þ invð2L0  2L0 Þ
4:5N þ 2ðL0 Þ2 þ 3FFTN=2 þ invðL0  L0 Þ
3N þ ð2L0 Þ2 þ 5FFTN
5N þ ð2L0 Þ2 þ 5FFTN þ invð2L0  2L0 Þ
6N þ 2ðL0 Þ2 þ 4FFTN=2 þ 2  invðL0  L0 Þ
3N þ ð2L0 Þ2 þ 5FFTN
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
1010 H.-G. Jeon, E. Serpedin / Signal Processing 88 (2008) 1002–1016

2 1
Channel response Channel response
Eb/No = 15 dB Estimated channel response Estimated channel response
1.5
fd = 200 Hz 0.5
Eb/No = 15 dB
fd = 200 Hz

Image {H11(l,10)}
1
Real {H11(l,10)}

0
0.5
−0.5
0

−1
−0.5

−1 −1.5
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
OFDM symbol index OFDM symbol index

Fig. 3. An example of channel frequency response H ij ½l; k and tracking at f d ¼ 200 Hz, k ¼ 10 and E b =N 0 ¼ 15 dB.

sub-carriers are used to transmit data. The OFDM Fig. 3 shows an example of the proposed channel
symbol rate is 10 Ksps, and the symbol period is tracking and the nonlinear time variant channel
100 ms, including the guard time of 20 ms. The frequency response H 11 ½l; k simulated at the
channel length L0 is assumed to be 18. Modulation given multi-path channel parameters, l ¼ ð1; 2; . . . ;
in sub-carriers is QPSK. The carrier frequency is 100Þ, k ¼ 10, and maximum Doppler frequency
2.4 GHz. The multi-path Rayleigh fading channel f d ¼ 200 Hz. In Fig. 3, solid line is the channel
assumes two rays with equal gain, and each ray has response tracked by the proposed method at
six multi-path delay taps. Each signal path is E b =N 0 ¼ 15 dB. Fig. 3 shows that the nonlinear
assumed to undergo an independent Rayleigh channel response is well tracked by the proposed
fading. The rms delay spread is 1:82 ms. We used method. The performance simulation results are
the Rayleigh fading channel simulator (Jake’s shown in Figs. 4–11. Fig. 4 shows the MSE of the
sinusoid sum method) openly published in proposed method at the conditions of M ¼ 4, 5 and 6,
Ref. [11]. The Doppler frequencies 40, 100 and and at the fixed SNR of E b =N 0 ¼ 25 dB. The range of
200 Hz are used to represent different mobile the normalized Doppler frequency (f d T s ) is given
environments. After completion of channel estima- from 0 to 0:03. In the case of f d T s o0:02, the
tion by using the training signal, the system state is in performance of the proposed scheme (M ¼ 4) is the
data transmission mode. In data transmission mode, worst among all the investigated channel tracking
channel tracking for 20 consecutive OFDM symbols methods. The reason is that in decision directed mode,
is carried out continuously, using a decision directed the performance of the proposed channel response
method in which the demodulated data is used as the estimator is very highly affected by the prediction
reference data. The performance of the system is error caused by the first channel prediction just after
measured by the estimator’s MSE and bit error rates two training OFDM symbols. The prediction error
(BER), each averaged over 100,000 OFDM blocks. causes the demodulation error which results in MSE
For unbiased comparison, no channel coding is used performance degradation and propagates into the
in this simulation. In order to track the time varying next channel estimation. As mentioned before, when
channel response, Kalman filter method may be used two training OFDM symbols are received, only two
for MIMO–OFDM systems as Komninakis did [14]. channel responses H ij ½1; k and H ij ½2; k are
However, the Komninakis method should calculate obtained, and H ij ½3; k; . . . ; H ij ½1  M; k are as-
the inverse matrix in every OFDM symbol to obtain sumed to be equal to H ij ½2; k. Therefore, from (10),
Kalman gain matrix and thereby the calculation the MSEs for the first channel prediction are
amount increases significantly. For this reason, we proportional to x½l; k / 1:8s2e when M ¼ 4, x½l; k /
compare the proposed method with Kalman filter s2e when M ¼ 5 and x½l; k / 0:68s2e when M ¼ 6,
estimator, using scalar Kalman filter in each sub- respectively. There is a larger difference in MSE
carrier [15]. between M ¼ 4 and 5 than between M ¼ 5 and 6.
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
H.-G. Jeon, E. Serpedin / Signal Processing 88 (2008) 1002–1016 1011

10−1
Proposed(M = 4)
Proposed(M = 5)
Proposed(M = 6)
Li original

10−2
MSE

10−3

10−4
0 0.005 0.01 0.015 0.02 0.025 0.03
fd*Ts

Fig. 4. MSE performance as a function of f d T s at a given M.

101
Proposed CE
No predict
FDE Eb/No = 25 dB
100 Li original

10−1
MSE

10−2

10−3

10−4
0 0.005 0.01 0.015 0.02 0.025 0.03
fd*Ts

Fig. 5. MSE performance as a function of f d T s for each channel tracking method.

The noise effect in channel prediction can be increased sensitivity to channel time variations.
reduced by increasing M, as shown in Fig. 4. Note that MSEðM ¼ 6Þ is larger than MSEðM ¼
However, increasing M beyond a certain limit may 5Þ at f d T s 40:015. We can see that when M ¼ 5, the
result in performance degradation due to the proposed method shows the best performance in
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
1012 H.-G. Jeon, E. Serpedin / Signal Processing 88 (2008) 1002–1016

102
Proposed CE
No predict
101 FDE
FED + Km filter
Li original

100
MSE

10−1

10−2

10−3

10−4
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
Eb/No [dB]

Fig. 6. MSE performance at f d ¼ 40 Hz.

100
Proposed CE
No predict
FDE
10−1 FED + Km filter
Li original
Perfect CE
10−2

10−3
BER

10−4

10−5

10−6

10−7
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
Eb/No [dB]

Fig. 7. BER performance at f d ¼ 40 Hz.

Fig. 4. Hereafter, M is set to 5 in all the simulations 500 ms. Fig. 5 shows the MSE for each method as a
for performance evaluation. When M ¼ 5 and the function of f d T s at the conditions: E b =N 0 ¼ 25 and
OFDM symbol period is 100 ms, the time duration M ¼ 5. As we can see from Fig. 5, the MSE of the
for which a piecewise linear model is assumed is proposed method increases more slowly than the
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
H.-G. Jeon, E. Serpedin / Signal Processing 88 (2008) 1002–1016 1013

103
Proposed CE
No predict
102 FDE
FED + Km filter
Li original

101

100
MSE

10−1

10−2

10−3

10−4
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
Eb/No [dB]

Fig. 8. MSE performance at f d ¼ 100 Hz.

100

10−1

10−2
BER

10−3

10−4

Proposed CE
No predict
10−5 FDE
FED + Km filter
Li original
Perfect CE

10−6
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
Eb/No[dB]

Fig. 9. BER performance at f d ¼ 100 Hz.

other methods as f d T s increases. On the other hand, Figs. 6, 8 and 10 show MSE performances at
MSE of Li’s original method increases rapidly when Doppler frequencies of 40, 100 and 200 Hz, respec-
f d T s 40:015. tively. Figs. 7, 9 and 11 show BER performances at
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
1014 H.-G. Jeon, E. Serpedin / Signal Processing 88 (2008) 1002–1016

102
Proposed CE
No predict
FDE
101 FED + Km filter
Li original

100
MSE

10−1

10−2

10−3

10−4
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
Eb/No [dB]

Fig. 10. MSE performance at f d ¼ 200 Hz.

100

10−1

10−2
BER

10−3

10−4
Proposed CE
No predict
FDE
10−5 FED + Km filter
Li original
Perfect CE

10−6
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
Eb/No [dB]

Fig. 11. BER performance at f d ¼ 200 Hz.

Doppler frequencies of 40, 100 and 200 Hz, respec- these figures, ‘FDE’ denotes the frequency domain
tively. In these figures, BER performance curves for channel tracking method of Ref. [10]. In order to
perfect channel estimation are given to show the compare the effect of channel prediction, BER and
performance in the ideal channel estimation case. In MSE curves for the ‘no predict’ tracking method are
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
H.-G. Jeon, E. Serpedin / Signal Processing 88 (2008) 1002–1016
also drawn in these figures. ‘No predict’ means the
proposed method without the channel prediction
function. If ‘no prediction’ is used, the previously
estimated channel value H ij ½l  1; k is used as
the current channel value H ij ½l; k. In this case, the
channel estimation error is given by H ij ½l; k
H^ ij ½l  1; k ¼ Dij ½l; k þ Zij ½l; k. When the channel
prediction is used, the channel estimation error is
given by DH ij ½l; k ¼ H ij ½l; k  H ij ½l; k. The MSE
of ‘no prediction’ is given by E½ðH ij ½l; k
H^ ij ½l  1; kÞ2  ’ Var½Dij ½l; k þ s2e . The MSE of
‘prediction’ is E½jDH ij ½l; kj2  ’ 1:5s2e as we can see
from (10). Therefore, the performance of ‘predic-
tion’ is better than that of ‘no prediction’ as long as
Var½Dij ½l; k40:5s2e is satisfied. Var½Dij ½l; k  0 at
a low Doppler frequency ands2e is inversely propor-
tional to the E b =N 0 such that s2e  0 at a high
E b =N 0 . Therefore, the lower the Doppler frequency
is in the wireless channel, the higher E b =N 0 is
required to satisfy the condition of Var½Dij ½l; k
40:5s2e . That is the reason why the performance of
‘no prediction’ is better than that of ’prediction’ at
f d ¼ 40 Hz. Note that in Fig. 6, the performance
gap in E b =N 0 between ‘no prediction’ and ‘predic-
tion’ is getting narrow with increase of E b =N 0 . If we
can know the information about E b =N 0 and the
Doppler frequency, either ‘no prediction’ or ‘pre-
diction’ can be selected to improve the performance
of channel estimator, based on such information.
At a Doppler frequency of 40 Hz, there is a little
difference in the MSE and BER performance
between the proposed method and Li’s original
method. At f d ¼ 100 Hz and BER of 104 , the
performance improvement provided by the pro-
posed method is about 2.5 dB in E b =N 0 compared
with that of Li’s original method. However, at a
Doppler frequency of 200 Hz, the BER performance
difference becomes much larger when compared
with those of other methods. As we can see from
Figs. 9 and 11, due to the inter sub-carrier
interference (ICI) [16], BER performance at a
Doppler frequency of 200 Hz is worse than that of
100 Hz.
From these figures, we can observe that the
channel estimation error of Li’s original method is
very large at a given low E b =N 0 . At a given low
E b =N 0 , BER is high and the demodulated data
X^ ½l; k is erroneous. Since Li’s original method
calculates the inverse of a matrix made of erroneous
demodulated data X^ ½l; k, the channel estimation
error is amplified by noise and the erroneous inverse
matrix. In the worst case of low E b =N 0 (less than
1015
5 dB), the channel estimation error may diverge when
tracking the channel response. On the other hand,
since the proposed method uses the known inverse
matrix Q1 which is a constant time-invariant
matrix, the effect of the erroneous demodulated data
is much less significant than that of Li’s original
method. The simulation results show that as expected
the proposed method does not diverge.
6. Conclusions
This paper proposed a novel simplified channel
tracking method to reduce the computational
complexity and improve the tracking performance
in time varying channel environments. In the
proposed method, a blind channel response pre-
dictor is designed to cope with the time variant
channel. The proposed channel tracking scheme
consists of a frequency domain estimation approach
that is coupled with an MMSE time domain
estimation method, and does not require any matrix
inverse calculation during each OFDM symbol. By
converting the MISO signal into a SISO signal and
performing temporal channel estimation in the
frequency domain before beginning time domain
channel estimation, no matrix inversion is required
anymore. The simulation results show that the
proposed method exhibits superior performance
than Li’s original method in time varying channel
environments. At a Doppler frequency of 100 Hz
and BER of 104 , signal-to-noise power ratio
(E b =N 0 ) gains of about 2.5 dB are achieved relative
to Li’s original method. At a Doppler frequency of
200 Hz, the performance difference between the
proposed method and conventional one becomes
much larger.
Acknowledgment
This work was partially supported by research
project 07-03 funded by Electronics and Telecom-
munications Research Institute (ETRI) in Korea.
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