Iterative Channel Estimation Based on B-splines for Fast Flat Fading Channels

We propose novel low-complexity iterative channel estimators based on B-splines. Local splines are adopted for computational simplicity. Minimum mean square error (MMSE) local splines with integral sampling are derived. The MSE of the proposed estimators depends on signal-to-noise ratio, fading rate, sampling interval, spline order and the number of weighting coefficients; these dependencies are investigated. The linear and cubic local splines with as few as seven weighting coefficients are capable of achieving MSE and BER performance comparable to those of the Wiener filter and the spheroidal basis expansion. However, a significantly lower complexity is achieved using B-splines