A Minimum-Complexity High-Performance Channel Estimator for MIMO-OFDM Communications

Channel estimation is critical to the performance of a multiple-input multiple-output and orthogonal frequency-division-multiplexing (MIMO-OFDM) communication system. Current MIMO-OFDM channel estimation techniques suffer from either high complexity or poor performance. In fact, this issue has become one of the bottlenecks of a practical MIMO-OFDM system. This paper solves the problem by introducing a new technique that has minimum complexity and yet provides superior channel tracking performance close to a minimum mean square error (MMSE) estimate over a wide range of channel selectivity and noise variance. The performance was evaluated via numerical simulations.