Modulation-independent non-data-aided SNR estimator for OFDM signals in Nakagami fading channels

A signal-to-noise ratio estimator for OFDM signals in Nakagami-m fading channels is proposed. This estimator can be used with any signal constellation. It is an envelope-based non-data-aided estimator that makes use of statistical-moments of the received OFDM signals to get an estimate of the SNR in time domain. A mathematical derivation of the estimator is given and two main performance measures are evaluated, namely, the bias and the mean-squared-error. Our results reveal that this estimator works better in severe fading cases and has a good performance with low bias and low variance in the range of concern for communication systems.