A time-domain estimation method of rapidly time-varying channels for OFDM-based LTE-R systems

This paper addresses the performance of fast doubly selective fading channel estimation combined with Inter-Carrier Interference (ICI) cancellation for Long Term Evolution (LTE) communication platform in the High Speed Railway (HSR) environment. We consider the Channel Impulse Response (CIR) coefficients with a critical Doppler frequency shift and multi-path fading that were taken from the WINNER II channel model and the D2a propagation scenario, where the conditions of HSR are analyzed. As multi-path fading increases and the channel varies in the order of the symbol period, we first propose a novel approach for designing a pilot symbol structure in the time domain. Then, we describe the deployment of the proposed pilot symbol structure to estimate the channel in the time domain. Channel information corresponding to the data positions is obtained by linear interpolation. In each OFDM symbol, the slope and the initial value for establishing an interpolation function are estimated to adapt to the time variation of the channel. An accurate estimate of channel state information is used for the purpose of ICI cancellation. The simulation results show that the channel estimated by our proposed method can follow the real channel well, even in a very high Doppler frequency. The estimation method in terms of Mean Squared Error (MSE) significantly outperforms the state-of-the-art methods. The combination of our channel estimator with several interference cancelers provides a considerably better system performance than that achieved when frequency channel estimation is used.