Channel impulse response estimation in IEEE 802.11p via data fusion and group orthogonal matching pursuit

Tracking the channel impulse response in systems based on the IEEE 802.11p standard, the most widely accepted standard for the physical layer in Vehicular Area NETworks (VANETs), is still an open research topic. As matter of fact tracking the channel impulse response is the most challenging issue in designing the receiver for VANET devices. In fact, due to high vehicle speeds, the Doppler effect reduces the coherence time and coherence bandwidth of the channel response, making the IEEE802.11p pilot tones not sufficient for channel tracking purposes. In this paper we aim to improve previously proposed techniques by utilizing a channel estimation technique known as “group orthogonal matching pursuit”. Moreover, we propose a novel technique that exploits the data provided by sensors like GPS or speedometer, usually present in vehicles. Simulation results show that both techniques give considerable improvements in terms of bit error rate and packet error rate for a scenario which is particularly stressing the channel estimation, i.e., the highway Road To Vehicle scenario.