Low-Complexity Channel Estimation for Mobile Communication Systems

In a typical wireless communication environment, radio channels need to be estimated for systems employing coherent detection. For implementation simplicity, Pilot-Assisted Channel Estimation (PACE) techniques have been widely used. An efficient interpolation method helps to estimate the channel fading coefficients between consecutive pilots with minimised pilot overhead. The simple linear interpolation method is easy to implement, but naturally results in residual interpolation errors that can not be mitigated even at high Signal-to-Noise Ratios (SNR). On the other hand, more sophisticated interpolation schemes usually require a high complexity that may be prohibited in real systems. In this paper, we propose a Channel Estimation (CE) scheme equipped with a novel interpolation method that is capable of achieving a good performance at a very low computational complexity. Numerical illustrations and simulation results provided show the benefits of the proposed CE technique.