Two-step LMMSE channel estimator for Unique Word MB-OFDM based UWB systems

In this paper, we investigate the robustness of the Unique Word Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (UW-OFDM) technique for channel estimation issue. We consider the UW-OFDM technique instead of Zero-Padding (ZP) OFDM one to construct the OFDM symbols for MultiBand Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing Ultra WideBand (MB-OFDM UWB) systems. Then, we propose a two-step LMMSE channel estimator. In the first step, by using the knowledge of UW sequence in the receiver side, the Channel Frequency Response (CFR) is estimated. In the second step, the Linear Minimum Mean-Squared Error (LMMSE) channel estimation is performed using the estimated CFR of the first step and the Channel Estimation Sequence (CES) included in the frame preamble. We evaluate the performance of the proposals in terms of Bit Error Rate (BER) by computer simulations. We show that the consideration of UW-OFDM technique provides, not only reduction of complexity, but also improvement in BER performance. Moreover, we show that the two-step LMMSE channel estimation does not affect the system performance mainly for low Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR).