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.