A low complexity channel estimation approach of LTE downlink system

Channel estimation is critical to receiver performance in the long term evolution (LTE) system. Reference signals are interspersed with data signals among the subcarriers to aid channel estimation. Linear minimum mean square error (LMMSE) channel estimation is an efficient approach to estimate the knowledge of channel with high complexity. This paper proposed a channel estimation approach based on singular value decomposition (SVD) for downlink channel in LTE system. Compared to the conventional algorithm, the proposed approach investigates the channel autocorrelation matrix respectively and substitutes it by small submatrices to reduce the complexity. The simulation result demonstrates that the complexity is significantly reduced with negligible performance degradation, so it could be a candidate of the channel estimation algorithm for downlink channel estimation in LTE system.