Theoretical studies and efficient algorithm of semi-blind ICI equalization for OFDM

The intercarrier interference (ICI) due to the Doppler frequency shift, sampling clock offset, time-varying multipath fading and local oscillator frequency offset becomes the major difficulty for the data transmission via the wireless orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems. The existing ICI mitigation schemes involve the frequency-domain channel estimation/equalization or the additional coding and therefore require the pilot symbols which reduce the throughput. The frequency-domain channel estimation/equalization relies on the huge matrix inversion with high computational complexity especially for the OFDM technologies possessing many subcarriers such as digital video broadcasting (DVB) systems and wireless metropolitan-area networks (WMAN). In our previous work, we proposed a semi-blind ICI equalization scheme using the joint multiple matrix diagonalization (JMMD) algorithm and empirically showed that the proposed method significantly improved the symbol error rates for QPSK- and 16QAM-OFDM systems. In this paper, we discuss the sufficient condition for the theoretical ICI equalizability and also propose an alternative semi-blind ICI equalization method based on the joint approximate diagonalization of eigen-matrices (JADE) algorithm, which is much more computationally efficient than our previous method.     

General ICI self-cancellation scheme for OFDM systems

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.     

Bounding performance and suppressing intercarrier interference in wireless mobile OFDM

While rapid variations of the fading channel cause intercarrier interference (ICI) in orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM), thereby degrading its performance considerably, they also introduce temporal diversity, which can be exploited to improve performance. We first derive a matched-filter bound (MFB) for OFDM transmissions over doubly selective Rayleigh fading channels, which benchmarks the best possible performance if ICI is completely canceled without noise enhancement. We then derive universal performance bounds which show that the time-varying channel causes most of the symbol energy to be distributed over a few subcarriers, and that the ICI power on a subcarrier mainly comes from several neighboring subcarriers. Based on this fact, we develop low-complexity minimum mean-square error (MMSE) and decision-feedback equalizer (DFE) receivers for ICI suppression. Simulations show that the DFE receiver can collect significant gains of ICI-impaired OFDM with affordable complexity. In the relatively low Doppler frequency region, the bit-error rate of the DFE receiver is close to the MFB.     

Doppler Spread Estimation for Broadband Wireless OFDM Systems Over Rician Fading Channels

In this paper, we present a new Doppler spread estimation algorithm for broadband wireless orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems with fast time-varying and frequency-selective Rayleigh or Rician fading channels. The new algorithm is developed by analyzing the statistical properties of the power of the received OFDM signal in the time domain, thus it is not affected by the influence of frequency-domain inter-carrier interference (ICI) introduced by channel variation within one OFDM symbol. The operation of the algorithm doesn’t require the knowledge of fading channel coefficients, transmitted data, or signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) at the receiver. It is robust against additive noise, and can provide accurate Doppler spread estimation with SNR as low as 0 dB. Moreover, unlike existing algorithms, the proposed algorithm takes into account the inter-tap correlation of the discrete-time channel representation, as is the case in practical systems. Simulation results demonstrate that this new algorithm can accurately estimate a wide range of Doppler spread with low estimation latency and high computational efficiency.     

Modeling and Estimation of Wireless OFDM Channels by Using Time-Frequency Analysis

Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) has become a very popular method for high data rate wireless communications because of its advantages over single carrier modulation schemes on multipath, frequency selective fading channels. However, intercarrier interference, due to Doppler frequency shifts, and multipath fading severely degrade the performance of OFDM systems. Estimation of channel parameters is required at the receiver. In this paper, we present a channel modeling and estimation method based on the time-frequency representation of the received signal. The discrete evolutionary transform provides a time-frequency procedure to obtain a complete characterization of the multipath, fading, and frequency selective channels. Simulations are used to illustrate the performance of the proposed procedure and to compare it with other time-varying channel estimation techniques.     

双选择性信道下发射分集MISO OFDM系统基于BEM的低复杂度信道均衡

在高速移动环境下,无线信道会同时经历时间选择性和频率选择性衰落,即所谓的快速时变信道,也称之为双选择性信道。最初的发射分集Alamouti编码方案是针对时不变平坦信道提出的,不能直接应用于快速时变信道。此外,OFDM 系统在双选信道下遭受的载波间干扰(ICI)不可忽视。因此,发射分集MISO OFDM系统在双选择性信道下既节能又有效的信号恢复是有挑战的。本文基于双选择性信道的基扩展模型(BEM)表示,研究了一种有效的可动态分组的混合干扰消除(HIC)信道均衡方案。仿真结果表明,提出的方案,与传统的MMSE均衡相比,计算复杂度大大降低的同时性能显著提高,计算量的降低减少了能量消耗,达到节能的目的;与现有的关于发射分集的信道均衡方案相比,表现出性能和复杂度的较好折中;此外,在信道信息完美已知的假设下,随着移动速度的提高,误码性能没有损失。      

Joint phase/amplitude estimation and symbol detection for wireless ICI self-cancellation coded OFDM systems

OFDM has been applied in the current wireless local-area networks and digital video broadcasting systems since it has the advantage over the conventional single-carrier modulation schemes when the frequency-selective fadings are present. Nevertheless, intercarrier-interference (ICI) due to Doppler frequency drift, phase offset, local oscillator frequency drift, and multipath fading will be a severe problem in OFDM systems. Previous ICI self-cancellation coding schemes can greatly reduce the ICI, but they are very sensitive to the phase ambiguity, which is due to the composite effect of the phase offset, the multipath fading and the local frequency drift. In this paper, the phase ambiguity and amplitude ambiguity problems in ICI self-cancellation coded OFDM receivers will be formulated and discussed. Then, a novel receiver which combines the current ICI self-cancellation coding techniques with a new expectation-maximization-based joint phase/amplitude estimation and symbol detection scheme is proposed. The outstanding performance of this proposed scheme is shown and compared with other existing methods at different noise levels through OFDM simulations.     

一种多载波MFSK信道编码方案

目前随着硬件和编码技术的提升,逐渐成熟的多载波技术在通信过程中得到广泛的推广和应用。为了在较严重的多径衰落条件下获取更高的频谱利用效率,采用静态多抽头信道建模的方式对无线信号传播进行模拟。以信道冲击响应数据的误码率作为分析基础,设计了一种引进正交频分复用及多天线技术概念进行改良的多载波MFSK编码方案,并验证了在多径衰落条件下的频谱使用效率及误码率,从而证明了该方案在提高频谱效率方面的可行性。     

Novel semi-blind ICI equalization algorithm for wireless OFDM systems

Intercarrier interference is deemed as one of the crucial problems in the wireless orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems. The conventional ICI mitigation schemes involve the frequency-domain channel estimation or the additional coding, both of which require the spectral overhead and hence lead to the significant throughput reduction. Besides, the OFDM receivers using the ICI estimation rely on a large-dimensional matrix inverter with high computational complexity especially for many subcarriers such as digital video broadcasting (DVB) systems and wireless metropolitan-area networks (WMAN). To the best of our knowledge, no semi-blind ICI equalization has been addressed in the existing literature. Thus, in this paper, we propose a novel semi-blind ICI equalization scheme using the joint multiple matrix diagonalization (JMMD) algorithm to greatly reduce the intercarrier interference in OFDM. However, the well-known phase and permutation indeterminacies emerge in all blind equalization schemes. Hence we also design a few OFDM pilot blocks and propose an iterative identification method to determine the corresponding phase and permutation variants in our semi-blind scheme. Our semi-blind ICI equalization algorithm integrating the JMMD with the additional pilot-based iterative identification is very promising for the future high-throughput OFDM systems. Through Monte Carlo simulations, the QPSK-OFDM system with our proposed semi-blind ICI equalizer can achieve significantly better performance with symbol error rate reduction in several orders-of-magnitude. For the 16QAM-OFDM system, our scheme can also improve the performance over the plain OFDM system to some extent.     

An efficient space-frequency coded OFDM system for broadband wireless communications

We propose an efficient space-frequency coded orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) system for high-speed transmission over wireless links. The analytical expression for the pairwise probability of the proposed space-frequency coded OFDM system is derived in slow, space- and frequency-selective fading channels. The design criteria of trellis codes used in the proposed system are then developed and discussed. It is shown that the proposed space-frequency coded OFDM can efficiently achieve the full diversity provided by the fading channel with low trellis complexity, while for traditional space-frequency coded OFDM systems, we need to design space-time trellis codes with high trellis complexity to exploit the maximum achievable diversity order. The capacity properties of space-frequency coded OFDM over multipath fading channels are also studied. Numerical results are provided to demonstrate the significant performance improvement obtained by the proposed space-frequency coded OFDM scheme, as well as the excellent outage capacity properties.     

Analysis and characterization of intercarrier and interblock interferences for wireless mobile OFDM systems

OFDM has been applied in a wide variety of wireless communications in recent years since it has the advantage over the conventional single-carrier modulation schemes when enduring the frequency-selective fading. However, intercarrier-interference (ICI) and interblock interference (IBI) due to the Doppler effect, carrier frequency drift of local oscillators and multipath fading limit the capability of OFDM systems. In this paper, a new generalized mathematical model for intercarrier and interblock interferences is derived for wireless mobile OFDM systems, in which Doppler frequency drift, local carrier frequency offset, multipath fading, and cyclic prefix coding are all present in reality. Such a new ICI/IBI model can be applied for OFDM performance evaluation in different environments. This new formulation of IBI and ICI provides a generalized framework which includes special ICI models appearing in the previous literature. Besides, the derived OFDM performance evaluation analysis in this paper can greatly benefit OFDM designers for wireless multimedia networks and digital video broadcasting technologies.     

Intercarrier Interference Suppression for OFDMA Uplink in Time- and Frequency-Selective Fading Channels

This paper investigates intercarrier interference (ICI) suppression and channel estimation for the uplink of an orthogonal frequency-division multiple-access (OFDMA) system in a time- and frequency-selective fading channel. In such a doubly selective channel, channel variations within each OFDMA block disrupt the orthogonality among subcarriers and leads to ICI. We develop an appropriate signal model for the OFDMA uplink in a doubly selective fading channel and propose a minimum mean square error (MMSE) scheme and an MMSE successive detection (MMSE-SD) scheme to suppress ICI. It is shown that the MMSE scheme is the optimal linear scheme in terms of maximizing achievable data rate and that the MMSE-SD scheme is able to further remove ICI and exploit the Doppler diversity embedded in time-varying channels. As an essential component in ICI suppression, channel estimation is also considered. A basis expansion model (BEM) is formulated for the OFDMA uplink channel, and a pilot-aided channel-estimation algorithm is developed to track users' channels in the time domain. Simulation results are presented to illustrate the overall performance improvements that can be obtained from using the proposed ICI suppression and channel-estimation schemes.      

Differential space-frequency modulation via smooth logical channel for broadband wireless communications

In this letter, a differential space-frequency modulation (DSFM) scheme is proposed for multiple input multiple-output (MIMO)-orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) systems in broadband wireless communications. We assume that the fading channels keep constant only within each OFDM block, and may change independently from one OFDM block to another. The differential schemes proposed for MIMO-OFDM systems in the literature cannot successfully decode with such a rapidly fading channel, since the successful decoding of the previously existing schemes relies on the assumption that the fading channel keeps constant within a period of several OFDM blocks, and it changes slowly from a period of several OFDM blocks to another. In our proposed DSFM scheme, the transmitted signals are differentially encoded in the frequency domain within each OFDM block. Thus, the differential decoding can be performed over subcarriers within each single OFDM block. Furthermore, if a statistical channel power-delay profile (PDP) is known at the transmitter, we propose to create a smooth logical channel to improve the performance of the DSFM scheme. We obtain the smooth logical channel by sorting the channel frequency responses over subcarriers from a statistical point of view. If the logical channel is not smooth enough, we further consider a pruning process in which we use only the "good" part of the channel and get rid of the "bad" part of the channel. Simulation results show that the proposed DSFM scheme over a smooth logical channel (with pruning, if necessary) performs well for various channel PDPs.     

Iterative MAP Equalization and Decoding in Wireless Mobile Coded OFDM

Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) system suffers extra performance degradation in fast fading channels due to intercarrier interference (ICI). Combining frequency domain equalization and bit-interleaved coded modulation (BICM), the iterative receiver is able to harvest both temporal and frequency diversity. Realizing that ICI channels are intrinsically ISI channels, this paper proposes a soft-in soft-out (SISO) maximum a posteriori (MAP) equalizer by extending Ungerboeck's maximum likelihood sequence estimator (MLSE) formulation to ICI channels. The SISO MAP equalizer employs BCJR algorithm and computes the bit log-likelihood ratios (LLR) for the entire received sequence by efficiently constructing a trellis that takes into account of the ICI channel structure. A reduced state (RS) formulation of the SISO MAP equalizer which provides good performance/complexity tradeoff is also described. Utilizing the fact that ICI energy is clustered in adjacent subcarriers, frequency domain equalization is made localized. This paper further proposes two computational efficient linear minimum mean square error (LMMSE) based equalization methods: recursive q-tap SIC-LMMSE equalizer and recursive Sliding-Window (SW) SIC-LMMSE equalizer respectively. Simulations results demonstrate that the iterative SISO RS-MAP equalizer achieves the performance of no ICI with normalized Doppler frequency f_dT_s up to 20.46% in realistic mobile WiMAX environment.     

A bandwidth-efficient method for cancellation of ICI in OFDM systems

Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is a very important modulation technique in wideband wireless communication and multimedia communication systems. While, it can effectively deal with multipath delay spread produced by frequency fading channels, its main drawback is the effect of frequency offset (FO) produced by the receiver local oscillator or by motion-induced Doppler. The FO breaks the orthogonality among the subcarriers and hence causes intercarrier interference (ICI). In this paper, ICI caused by frequency drift is eliminated by equalizing the complex weighting coefficients of interference. In most of the commonly used ICI cancellation schemes, bandwidth efficiency suffers because of the requirement of redundancy in the transmission. In the proposed scheme, repetition of data symbols or transmission of training sequence is not required. Thus, the bandwidth efficiency of normal OFDM system is maintained. The improved performance of the present scheme is confirmed through extensive simulations.     

Adaptive interference suppression in multiuser wireless OFDMsystems using antenna arrays

This paper considers the problem of mitigating fading and interference in wireless orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) multiple access communication systems. Applications include cellular mobile radio, wireless local loop, and wireless local area networks. The effect of interchannel interference (ICI) arising from time-selective fading and frequency offsets and co-channel interference (CCI) is analyzed. A loop-timing method that enables a synchronous uplink between multiple mobile transceivers and a base-station is described. Adaptive antenna arrays are utilized at the base for uplink reception, and optimum array combining based on the maximum SINR criterion is used for each subchannel over slowly time-varying channels. For operation over fast time-varying channels, a novel two-stage adaptive array architecture that incorporates combined spatial diversity and constraint-based beamforming is presented. While ICI alone is most effectively overcome by spatial diversity, combined beamforming and diversity are most effective to combat CCI in the presence of fading. The overall method is suitable for real-time implementation and can be used in conjunction with traditional coding schemes to increase the link-margin     

Low-Complexity Map Channel Estimation for Mobile MIMO-OFDM Systems

This paper presents a reduced-complexity maximum a posteriori probability (MAP) channel estimator with iterative data detection for orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems over mobile multiple-input multiple- output channels. The optimal MAP estimator needs to invert an NN_T x NN_T data-dependent matrix each in OFDM symbol interval, where N is the number of subcarriers and N_T is the number of transmit antennas. We derive an expectation maximization (EM) algorithm with low-rank approximation to avoid inverting large-size matrices, and thus drastically reduce the receiver complexity. In the iterative process, channel parameters are initially obtained by a least square (LS) estimator for temporary symbol decisions. Then, inter-carrier interference (ICI) due to fast fading is approximated and canceled. Finally, the temporary symbol decisions and the ICI-canceled received signals are processed by the EM-based MAP estimator to refine the channel state information for improved detection. The proposed scheme achieves about 2 dB gain over the LS scheme in channels with medium to high normalized Doppler shifts.     

Resource Management Techniques for OFDM Systems with the Presence of Inter-Carrier Interference

The aim of the paper is to study the problems of resource management in the presence of inter-carrier interference (ICI) and multipath fading channel for orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems. OFDM is a promising technique for the broadband wireless communication systems. However, the OFDM communication system is sensitive to ICI which arises because of Doppler spread and carrier frequency offset (CFO). To solve these problems, an optimization method has been exploited, and a computationally efficient method using numerical optimization techniques is proposed. The simulation results show that these derived optimal solutions and proposed suboptimal algorithms as compared with the uniform power allocation algorithm or conventional water-filling algorithm can significantly improve the performance of the OFDM systems.     

Channel‐estimate‐based frequency‐domain equalization (CE‐FDE) for broadband single‐carrier transmission

A channel‐estimate‐based frequency‐domain equalization (CE‐FDE) scheme for wireless broadband single‐carrier communications over time‐varying frequency‐selective fading channels is proposed. Adaptive updating of the FDE coefficients are based on the timely estimate of channel impulse response (CIR) to avoid error propagation that is a major source of performance degradation in adaptive equalizers using least mean square (LMS) or recursive least square (RLS) algorithms. Various time‐domain and frequency‐domain techniques for initial channel estimation and adaptive updating are discussed and evaluated in terms of performance and complexity. Performance of uncoded and coded systems using the proposed CE‐FDE with diversity combining in different time‐varying, multi‐path fading channels is evaluated. Analytical and simulation results show the good performance of the proposed scheme suitable for broadband wireless communications. For channels with high‐Doppler frequency, diversity combining substantially improves the system performance. For channels with sparse multi‐path propagation, a tap‐selection strategy used with the CE‐FDE systems can significantly reduce the complexity without sacrificing the performance. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Iterative Channel Estimators in V-BLAST OFDM Systems

An iterative pilot-symbol aided modulation (PSAM) channel estimation approach is proposed for vertical Bell Laboratories layered space-time (V-BLAST) orthogonal frequency division multiplexing systems operating on frequency-selective fading channels. Since the signals at the receive antennas are the superposition of signals from multiple transmit antennas, accurate channel estimates are crucial for good error performance. Furthermore, the time selectivity of the fading channels leads to inter-carrier interference (ICI). While ICI can be ignored for slow fading channels, it should be mitigated for fast fading channels. This paper proposes an ICI mitigation scheme for time-varying channels. We also propose an iterative channel estimator with low-complexity. Simulation results demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed algorithm on frequency-selective fading channels.