Performance Comparison of OFDM systems based on optimized pilots over Rician and Rayleigh fading channels

This paper presents the symbol error rate (SER) vs. signal-to-noise (SNR) ratio performance of OFDM system with QAM modulation. It has been observed that the optimal power allocation between pilot and information symbols can improve the performance gain by 2.3 dB relative to the equal power allocation between pilot and information symbols, for a system with N=3D512 sub-carriers, and a channel with L=3D40 taps. The SER performance is then compared with Rayleigh-faded as well as Rician-faded channels. It has been further concluded that the SER vs. SNR performance graph in Rayleigh-faded channel environment is better than that in Rician-faded channel. This idea implies that in OFDM case, the SER vs. SNR performance is better in scattered rich channel environments. The SER vs. SNR performance graph is degraded by equal magnitude for both equal-power and optimal-power cases, which implies that the difference between the equal-power and optimal power case is independent of the channel fading model being used. It is also observed that by varying the standard-deviation of the channel, the SER vs. SNR performance graph is not going to be affected if the channel is considered Rayleigh-faded.