A reduced complexity channel estimation for OFDM systems with transmit diversity in mobile wireless channels

A reduced complexity channel estimation for OFDM systems with transmit diversity is proposed by exploiting the correlation of the adjacent subchannel responses. The sizes of the matrix inverse and the FFTs required in the channel estimation at every OFDM data symbol are reduced by half of the existing method for OFDM systems with nonconstant modulus subcarrier symbols or constant modulus subcarrier symbols with some guard tones. The complexity reduction of half FFTs size and some matrix multiplications is still achieved for constant modulus subcarrier symbols with no guard tones. The price for the complexity reduction is a slight BER degradation and for the channels with small relative delay spreads, the BER performance of the reduced complexity method becomes quite comparable to the existing method. An alternative approach for the number of significant taps required in the channel estimation is described which achieves a comparable performance to the case with the known suitable number of significant taps. A simple modification which reduces the lost leakage of the nonsample-spaced channel paths is also proposed. This modification achieves a substantial performance improvement over the existing method without any added complexity