BEM-PSP for single-carrier and SC-FDMA communication over a doubly selective fading channel

Abstract

In this paper, we consider pilot-aided channel estimation and equalization for single-carrier and single-carrier frequency division multiple-access (SC-FDMA) transmission over doubly-selective channels (DSC). To reduce the channel estimation (CE) parameters, the DSC is modelled using a complex-exponential basis expansion model (CX-BEM) with non-uniform BEM frequencies. We optimize the CX-BEM basis functions using CE error minimization as the objective. As a result, the channel modelling error is greatly reduced. Next, we propose a BEM-based per-survivor processing (PSP) technique and combine it with a decision-directed channel estimator to obtain a channel-tracking equalizer at the receiver. The resultant BEM-PSP receiver significantly improves the channel estimation mean square error (MSE) and the bit error rates (BER) performance in fast fading multi-path channel, thanks to the channel tracking capability embedded within its Viterbi equalizer. Finally, we employ cross-frame channel interpolation, and power distribution between the data and pilot symbols to further improve the system performance at high fading rates. Extensive simulation results show that our BEM-PSP receiver outperforms many existing methods and approaches close to an ideal receiver with perfectly known CSI under various fading scenarios.