Bandwidth efficient power-aided semi-blind channel estimation for multiple-antenna systems

This study presents a semi-blind channel estimation scheme for multiple-antenna systems. With the aid of channel covariance and received signal power, the proposed scheme derives channel estimates using pilot symbols transmitted by only one of its antennas. Other transmit antennas in the scheme do not need to transmit any pilot symbols. As such, the proposed scheme has higher bandwidth efficiency compared with conventional pilot symbol-based multiple-antenna channel estimation schemes, where every antenna is required to transmit pilot symbols. It is shown that the proposed scheme is able to deliver performance on par with the conventional minimum mean-square error and least-square error multiple-channel estimation schemes. The strength of the proposed scheme lies in its ability to exploit received signal power for channel estimation.