Resource block embedding: Towards high throughput broadband multimedia wireless networks

For orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) based wireless systems, a resource block (RB) in a two-dimensional time-frequency plane is defined as a data block spanned by a number of consecutive OFDM symbols over a number of consecutive subcarriers. Traditionally, RBs contain modulation symbols for data transmission and pilot symbols for channel estimation. In this paper, we present a novel approach to RB designs for OFDM systems with multiple antennas at the transmitter and the receiver (i.e., MIMO-OFDM). The proposed approach, termed resource block embedding, does not require explicit pilot symbols to estimate the channel at the receiver, and hence reduces the channel estimation overhead significantly. We describe, in detail, the encoding and decoding algorithms for our proposed embedded resource blocks (ERB) for single-user single-antenna transmission, two transmitter antenna Alamouti code, four transmitter antenna stacked Alamouti code, and multi-stream spatial multiplexing. We also outline construction of ERBs for multi-user MIMO systems.