Pilot-Symbol-Aided 16PSK and 16QAM for Digital Land Mobile Radio Systems

The paper proposes a novel pilot-symbol-aided (PSA) technique for fading compensation of digital signals in the mobile environments. In a PSA system, the data sequence at the transmitter is divided into frames of data. A pilot symbol from a known pseudoradom-symbol sequence is inserted periodically into a frame of data symbol for transmission. In a conventional PSA-receiver, these pilot symbols are extracted from the received signal and used to estimate the effects of signal distortion introduced in the fading channel. The resultant estimates are then used to correct the distortion effects in the received data frames. In the paper, a novel estimation technique that uses the data symbols as well as the pilot symbols is proposed. The technique has the major advantages of simple implementation and short storage-delay time. Results are presented in a series of computer-simulation tests. These assess the effectiveness of the estimation technique on the BER performances of a 16-ary phase-shift keyed (16PSK) and a 16-ary quadrature-amplitude modulated (16QAM) signals in the frequency-selective and frequency-nonselective Rayleigh fading channels. The channels are corrupted by co-channel interference or additive white Gaussian noise. Results of differential-detected 16PSK and star-16QAM signals are also presented for comparison. It has been shown that, the use of PSA technique can significantly improve the bit-error-rate performances of the systems, relative to those using differential detection.     

Data-Aided Fading Estimation Technique for Shadowed Mobile Satellite Fading Channels

A novel data-aided fading estimation technique that employs both pilot anddata symbols is proposed to significantly reduce the bandwidth redundancy ofthe pilot-symbol-aided (PSA) systems using receivers with low complexity andlatency in the shadowed mobile satellite fading channels. The shadowed mobilesatellite fading channels are modeled as the sum of a lognormally distributeddirect component and a Rayleigh distributed multipath component, and the PSAsystem employs 16-ary quadrature-amplitude-modulation (16QAM) fortransmission. Monte Carlo computer simulation has been used to assess thetechnique on the bit-error-rate (BER) performances of the system in the lightshadowed, the average shadowed and the heavy shadowed Rician fadingenvironments. The results have shown that the proposed technique requires avery low bandwidth redundancy to provide satisfactory BER performances, andcan substantially lower the error floors of the PSA systems.     

Performances of 16QAM with fading compensation and postdetection diversity reception in satellite mobile channels

This paper studies the effects of N-branch postdetection selection diversity reception, where N = 1, 2, 3 or 4, incorporated with fading compensation on a digital satellite mobile system. The digital satellite mobile system transmits a pilot-symbol-aided 16-ary quadrature-amplitude modulated (PSA-16QAM) signal over the Rician channels. A selection method that makes use of the pilot symbols to select one of the N branches in the diversity reception system for signal detection, and a novel PSA technique that makes use of both the pilot symbols and data symbols for fading compensation, are proposed. Computer simulation tests are used to assess the effects of the proposed techniques on bit-error rate performances (BER) of the PSA-16QAM system in the presence of additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) or co-channel interference (CCI) in the Rician faded channels. When frequency diversity is used, PSA-16QAM with 2-branch and 4-branch diversity reception occupies about the same bandwidths as quaternary phase-shift-keying (QPSK) without using diversity and with 2-branch diversity, respectively, yet achieving the same capacity. Thus, simulation tests on the BER performances of a QPSK system without diversity and with 2-branch diversity are also carried out and the results are used to determine the preferred system arrangements. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A coded 16 QAM scheme for fast fading mobile radio channels

An adaptive Viterbi algorithm, derived from a dynamic estimate of the fading channel is used for the decoding of a convolutional coded 16 QAM system in a mobile environment. The estimates are obtained by a sequence of known pilot symbols embedded in the data stream, and perform compensation for Rayleigh fading. The likelihood criterion in the Viterbi decoder is also modified by these channel estimates through a metric weighting function. We demonstrate through computer simulations, that our new technique achieves a BER improvement of 7-10 dB at P_e =10^-3 in a fast flat Rayleigh fading environment compared to an uncoded system. The BER performance of our new technique in a co-channel interference (CCI) controlled environment is also studied, and the results show that it may achieve a 40% to 85% improvement in capacity over the standard modem scheme for the new US digital cellular system, π/4-QPSK     

Combination performance of truncated decorrelator and coherent RAKE receiver for DS-CDMA

The combination performance of a truncated decorrelator and a coherent RAKE receiver using pilot symbol-aided channel estimation is evaluated by computer simulation for DS-CDMA in several multipath fading environments. Computer simulation results show that the proposed truncated decorrelator can within a window of several symbols, improve the bit error rate (BER) performances compared to the conventional matched filter receiver in fast Rayleigh fading environments     

Rayleigh fading compensation for QAM in land mobile radiocommunications

A pilot symbol-aided Rayleigh fading compensation is investigated for M-ary quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) to achieve highly spectrally efficient land mobile communication systems. The optimum parameters for fading compensation, bit error rate (BER) performance against E_b/N₀ (energy per bit to the noise power spectrum density), adjacent channel interference, and cochannel interference for 16-QAM, 64-QAM, and 256-QAM, and the spectral efficiencies for these modulation schemes in Rayleigh fading environments are investigated by computer simulation. To further verify the effect of pilot symbol-aided fading compensation from a a practical point of view, a 16-QAM modem is implemented, laboratory experiments are executed, and the impact of the dynamic range limitation due to the resolution of the analog-to-digital (A/D) converters is evaluated, along with the imperfection of the analog circuits. It is demonstrated by computer simulation and laboratory experiments that the pilot symbol-aided fading compensation can sufficiently compensate for fast varying Rayleigh fading, and 16-QAM gives the highest spectral efficiency in the case of cellular systems     

Bandwidth-efficient pilot-symbol-aided technique formultipath-fading channels

Pilot-symbol-aided (PSA) transmission is one of the effective methods to combat multipath-fading in digital mobile communications systems. In the PSA systems, redundant bandwidth and power are required to transmit the pilot symbols. We propose a novel fading estimation technique that requires a very low bandwidth redundancy in the PSA systems. The proposed technique uses simple linear interpolation on the pilot symbols and the detected data symbols to obtain the estimates of the channel fading effects. Monte Carlo computer simulation has been carried out to study the effects of the technique on the bit error rate performance of 16-ary quadrature amplitude modulation in the flat and the frequency-selective Rayleigh-fading channels corrupted with cochannel interference and additive white Gaussian noise. Results have shown that the proposed technique can, at the expense of a little power efficiency, significantly improve the bandwidth efficiency of the PSA systems using receivers with low complexity and latency     

Combining Pilot-Symbol-Aided Techniques for Fading Estimation and Diversity Reception in Multipath Fading Channels

A novel pilot-symbol-aided (PSA) fading estimation technique that combines the estimates from a conventional PSA technique and a bandwidth-efficient PSA technique to achieve better performances is proposed for digital signals in multipath fading channels. The conventional technique has better performances at low signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs), while the bandwidth-efficient technique is superior at high SNRs. Monte Carlo computer simulation has been used to assess the effects of the proposed combining technique on the bit-error-rate (BER) performances of 16-ary quadrature-amplitude-modulation (16QAM), with and without two-branch diversity reception, in a flat Rayleigh fading channel. Results have shown that the combining technique has the advantages of both of the conventional technique and the bandwidth-efficient technique and is more preferred for use with diversity reception. Man-Hung Ng received a BSc degree in Computer Studies from City University of Hong Kong in 1991. He worked as a computer programmer in Hong Kong from 1991 to 1995. In 1996, he obtained a MSc degree in Communication and Radio Engineering from King's College London. He joined the University of Hong Kong as a research assistant in 1997, and completed a PhD degree in mobile communications in 2001. He joined Lucent Technologies N.S. UK in 2001 and is now a principal standards engineer. Sing-Wai Cheung received the BSc degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from Middlesex University, U.K. in 1982 and the PhD degree from Loughborough University of Technology, U.K. in 1986. From 1986–1988, he was a post-doctorate research assistant in the Communications Research Group of King's College, London University. During 1988–1990, he was with the Radio and Satellite Communications Division in British Telecom Research Laboratories (now British Telecom Laboratories). He joined the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at the University of Hong Kong in 1990 and is now an Associate Professor. He contributes regularly courses on mobile and satellite communications systems. His current research interests include modulation, coding, fading compensation and diversity and MIMO for mobile and satellite communications systems.     

Symbol-aided plus decision-directed reception for PSK/TCMmodulation on shadowed mobile satellite fading channels

The symbol-aided (SA) synchronization concept developed by Moher and Lodge (1989) is applied to the MSAT channel modeled with a shadowed Rician process. Simulation data demonstrate that it can track the severe phase jitter encountered on the fading channel free of the false lock which plagues conventional techniques. The algorithm multiplexes known symbols into the data stream, establishing an absolute reference free of decision errors that is used to estimate the fading phase. An improvement to the SA algorithm which extracts phase information from the data-bearing symbols is proposed. It is found that the new technique is more effective for larger K. The improved algorithm is referred to as symbol-aided plus decision-directed (SADD) phase estimation. A system employing SADD phase estimation, trellis-coded modulation, interleaving, and amplitude weighting within the Viterbi decoder yielded the best BER performance on the shadowed MSAT channel considered     

Bandwidth-efficient pilot symbol aided technique

A novel fading estimation technique is introduced to substantially reduce the bandwidth redundancy of pilot symbol aided systems in multipath environments. The results of computer simulation tests are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of this technique on the BER performances of 16 QAM     

Nonselective Fading Channel Estimation with Nonuniformly Spaced Pilot Symbols

Recently, there has been great demand for multimedia and data communications in mobile communication systems. In order to enhance voice quality and increase packet data throughput rate for the existing mobile systems and the next generation mobile systems, a number of new standards are being developed. 8-PSK/QPSK modulation has been adopted by most of these standards as one of the modulation schemes, and nonuniformly spaced pilot symbols are employed in slot structures to have successful demodulation. In this paper, an accurate and computationally efficient method is presented for estimating nondispersive channel fading with non-uniformly spaced pilot symbols. By employing a least-squares method with time-variant complex-valued coefficient polynomials, it is proven that nonselective channel fading of each slot can be estimated by the product of a constant matrix and the fading at pilot symbol locations of the slot. The constant matrix is further optimized by least-squares off-line training method provided by this paper. Using the estimated fading process, the fading on the data symbols can be removed by using the estimated amplitude and phase of the fading as the reference, greatly improving the BER. Closed form results for the BER of coherent 8-PSK are included in this paper as well. Simulation results indicate that our method provides BER performance very close to the analytic BER result.     

Adaptive joint detection and decoding in flat-fading channels viamixture Kalman filtering

A novel adaptive Bayesian receiver for signal detection and decoding in fading channels with known channel statistics is developed; it is based on the sequential Monte Carlo methodology that has emerged in the field of statistics. The basic idea is to treat the transmitted signals as “missing data” and to sequentially impute multiple samples of them based on the observed signals. The imputed signal sequences, together with their importance weights, provide a way to approximate the Bayesian estimate of the transmitted signals and the channel states. Adaptive receiver algorithms for both uncoded and convolutionally coded systems are developed. The proposed techniques can easily handle the non-Gaussian ambient channel noise. It is shown through simulations that the proposed sequential Monte Carlo receivers achieve near-bound performance in fading channels for both uncoded and coded systems, without the use of any training/pilot symbols or decision feedback. Moreover, the proposed receiver structure exhibits massive parallelism and is ideally suited for high-speed parallel implementation using the very large scale integration (VLSI) systolic array technology     

Optimal Training and Pilot Pattern Design for OFDM Systems in Rayleigh Fading

This paper deals with two major considerations for pilot symbol assisted orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (PSA-OFDM) systems when operated over Rayleigh fading channels. One of them is to decide how many pilot symbols should be used and the other is where to place these pilot symbols, i.e. pilot pattern. Incorporating linear interpolation and choosing appropriate system parameters, we first derive analytically the bit-error-rate (BER) for frequency-selective fading, time-selective fading and correlated fading, respectively. Based on the theoretical BER, the optimal training can be determined numerically for a specific fading environment. Furthermore, we propose a new and simple pilot pattern for PSA-OFDM system and its performance is analyzed in terms of the BER. The proposed scheme clusters two neighboring pilots together so as to increase the channel estimate accuracy by averaging over the two pilot symbols. Analytical and simulation results show that this clustered pilot pattern gives better performance in terms of BER than the existing equi-spaced pilot pattern when the channel SNR is moderate, without sacrificing the bandwidth efficiency     

一种新的导频符号辅助下的信道衰落估计方法

本文提出一种新的导频符号辅助下的信道衰落估计方法。它同时利用导频符号和数据符号进行信道衰落估计和补偿,而不同于传统的信道衰落估计只利用导频符号的信息。此方法具有实现简单,延时小的优点。针对16PSK和16QAM调制方式作了仿真,结果显示导频符号辅助下的16QAM的性能优于16PSK,采用信道衰落估计与相干检测结合的16PSK性能又好于采用差分检测的16PSK的性能。     

Combining PSA fading estimation techniques for TCM and diversity reception in Rician fading channels

In this paper, a novel pilot‐symbol‐aided (PSA) technique is proposed for fading estimation in the land mobile satellite fading channels. The proposed technique combines the fading estimates obtained from a bandwidth‐efficient technique and a conventional technique according to the signal‐to‐noise ratios (SNRs) of the fading estimates. To enhance the transmission quality, trellis‐coded modulation (TCM) and diversity reception are employed in the system, and the combined estimates are subsequently used to correct the channel fading effects, to weight the signals from different diversity branches, and to provide channel state information to the Viterbi decoder. Monte Carlo computer simulation has been used to study the bit‐error‐rate (BER) performance of the proposed technique on trellis‐coded 16‐ary quadrature amplitude modulation in the frequency non‐selective Rician fading channels. Results have shown that the proposed PSA technique requires a very low bandwidth redundancy to provide satisfactory BER performance at low SNRs, and thus is suitable for use with TCM and diversity reception to achieve both bandwidth and power‐efficient transmission. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Optimum Pilot Symbol Assisted Modulation

Optimum detectors for pilot symbol assisted modulation (PSAM) signals in Rayleigh and Rician fading channels are derived. Conventional PSAM as used on Rayleigh fading channels is also employed on Rician fading channels. It is shown that the conventional PSAM receiver is optimal for binary phase shift keying in Rayleigh fading but suboptimal for Rician fading and suboptimal for 16-ary quadrature amplitude modulation in Rayleigh fading. The optimum PSAM signal detector uses knowledge of the specular component and also jointly processes the pilot symbols and the data symbol. The performance of the optimum detector is analyzed and compared with that of the conventional detector. It is concluded that substantial gains can be achieved by exploiting knowledge of the specular component while joint processing of the data symbol with the pilot symbols may offer small benefits.     

Analysis of Transmit Antenna Selection/Maximal-Ratio Combining in Rayleigh Fading Channels

In this paper, we investigate a multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) scheme combining transmit antenna selection and receiver maximal-ratio combining (the TAS/MRC scheme). In this scheme, a single transmit antenna, which maximizes the total received signal power at the receiver, is selected for uncoded transmission. The closed-form outage probability of the system with transmit antenna selection is presented. The bit error rate (BER) of the TAS/MRC scheme is derived for binary phase-shift keying (BPSK) in flat Rayleigh fading channels. The BER analysis demonstrates that the TAS/MRC scheme can achieve a full diversity order at high signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs), as if all the transmit antennas were used. The average SNR gain of the TAS/MRC is quantified and compared with those of uncoded receiver MRC and space-time block codes (STBCs). The analytical results are verified by simulation. It is shown that the TAS/MRC scheme outperforms some more complex space-time codes of the same spectral efficiency. The cost of the improved performance is a low-rate feedback channel. We also show that channel estimation errors based on pilot symbols have no impact on the diversity order over quasi-static fading channels.     

天气影响下Ka频段移动卫星通信系统的性能

本文建立了ka频段移动卫星通信系统模型,并利用计算机进行仿真给出了不同天气时信号的误码率,为实际的系统设计提供了理论基础。在本文中信道模型建立为雨衰和多径阴影衰落信道。在该模型中,雨衰信道服从高斯分布,阴影衰落信道服从Nakagami-Rayleigh分布。与现在广泛应用的Loo模型相比,此阴影模型能够更好地利用计算机进行仿真,并能提供较清晰的数学表达式,对陆地移动卫星系统进行定性定量的性能预测。     

Channel estimation and compensation for preamble-assisted DAPSKtransmission in digital mobile radio system

This paper presents a novel channel estimation and compensation technique, combining fading estimation and frequency offset estimation, for preamble-assisted differentially encoded amplitude- and phase-shift keying (DAPSK) transmission in a digital mobile radio system. The received preamble symbols are used to estimate the combined distortions caused by multipath fading and frequency offset. The detected data symbols as well as preamble symbols are used to enhance the accuracy of the estimation process. The combined distortions can be compensated in the data symbols at the same time. The storage-delay time of the estimation process is only several symbols long. A series of computer simulations have been carried out to investigate the bit error rate performance of the preamble-assisted 16-DAPSK signals with uncertain frequency offset in the frequency-nonselective and frequency-selective Rayleigh fading channels     

Pilot-symbol aided coherent M-ary PSK in frequency-selective fastRayleigh fading channels

Pilot-symbol aided coherent M-ary PSK modems in digital cellular mobile radio systems are analyzed theoretically. The error-floors caused by the Doppler spread in a fast fading channel are removed in both flat and selective fading channels. However, the error-floors caused by the delay spread are lower-bounded by those that exist in the ideal coherent detection. The systems are modeled as frequency-selective fast Rayleigh fading channels, corrupted by co-channel interference (CCI) and additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN). In the proposed scheme, pilot symbols are inserted periodically to monitor the channel characteristics. The fading processes experienced by the pilot symbols are used to estimate those suffered by the data symbols using interpolation or filtering. The estimated fade characteristics are used to compensate the random phase variation caused by the Doppler spread, so that the signals can be demodulated coherently. The theoretical performances of the fade compensated coherent modems are evaluated. The results show that the fade compensated coherent demodulation with the least redundancy achieves the same performance as the ideal differential detection in a fading channel. The performance approaches that of the ideal coherent demodulation as more redundancy is allowed. The pilot-symbol-insertion (PSI) scheme is also applicable to M-ary QAM modems and Rician channels. The residual frequency offset can also be compensated by the PSI technique