Impact of pilot symbols design on the performance of the LTE system

Improving spectral efficiency as well as link reliability has become imperative in nowadays wireless communications. To achieve this purpose, combining Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) architecture with Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) technique is a widely accepted solution and has been implemented in various communication standards. Channel estimation is a critical processing step which is unavoidable in any wireless detection and can significantly impinge the system performance. This paper is tackling such an issue by considering the impact of the pilot symbols design on the LTE-based system performance in terms of BLER. It also proposes new pilot patterns by adjusting both their time and frequency spacing in a first step, then by spatially varying the patterns in a second one. The performance of the proposed patterns is compared to the 3GPP conventional pattern.