Low Pilot Ratio Channel Estimation for OFDM Systems Based on GCE-BEM

Doubly-selective channel estimator for orthogonal frequency division multiplexing(OFDM) systems is proposed in this paper. Based on the generalized complex exponential basis expansion model(GCE-BEM), we describe the time-variant channel with time-invariant coefficients over multiple OFDM blocks. The time variation of the channel destroys the orthogonality between subcarriers, and the resulting channel matrix in the frequency domain is no longer diagonal, but the main interference comes from the near subcarriers. Based on this, we propose a channel estimator with low pilot ratio. We first develop a least-square(LS) estimator under the assumption that only the maximum Doppler frequency and the channel order are known at the receiver, and then verify that the correlation matrix of inter-channel interference(ICI) is a scaled identity matrix based on which we derive an optimal pilot insertion scheme for the LS estimator in the sense of minimum mean square error. The proposed estimator has the advantages of low pilot ratio and robustness against inter-carrier interference.