Pilot design for a cellular wireless system based on Costas arrays

In this paper, we present a pilot design for an OFDM cellular system based on Costas arrays. The design provides pilot symbols for both common and dedicated pilots for MIMO transmission. The pilot symbols are designed so that pilots from different cells intersect minimally. The design results in a large number of available distinct pilot symbol patterns with minimally overlapping resource elements that may be assigned to different cells which simplifies cell planning. The design is described in the context of IEEE 802.16m, but is applicable to any OFDM system. Performance of the pilot design in noise and interference limited environments is presented and is shown to be on par with currently used pilot designs while providing a larger number of patterns.