Search

Intercarrier interference is deemed as one of the crucial problems in the wireless orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems. The conventional ICI mitigation schemes involve the frequency-domain channel estimation or the additional coding, both of which require the spectral overhead and hence lead to the significant throughput reduction. Besides, the OFDM receivers using the ICI estimation rely on a large-dimensional matrix inverter with high computational complexity especially for many subcarriers such as digital video broadcasting (DVB) systems and wireless metropolitan-area networks (WMAN). To the best of our knowledge, no semi-blind ICI equalization has been addressed in the existing literature. Thus, in this paper, we propose a novel semi-blind ICI equalization scheme using the joint multiple matrix diagonalization (JMMD) algorithm to greatly reduce the intercarrier interference in OFDM. However, the well-known phase and permutation indeterminacies emerge in all blind equalization schemes. Hence we also design a few OFDM pilot blocks and propose an iterative identification method to determine the corresponding phase and permutation variants in our semi-blind scheme. Our semi-blind ICI equalization algorithm integrating the JMMD with the additional pilot-based iterative identification is very promising for the future high-throughput OFDM systems. Through Monte Carlo simulations, the QPSK-OFDM system with our proposed semi-blind ICI equalizer can achieve significantly better performance with symbol error rate reduction in several orders-of-magnitude. For the 16QAM-OFDM system, our scheme can also improve the performance over the plain OFDM system to some extent. Index Terms--Blind ICI equalization, DVB, ICI mitigation, OFDM, throughput enhancement, wireless communications.

OFDM has been applied in a wide variety of wireless communications in recent years since it has the advantage over the conventional single-carrier modulation schemes when enduring the frequency-selective fading. However, intercarrier-interference (ICI) and interblock interference (IBI) due to the Doppler effect, carrier frequency drift of local oscillators and multipath fading limit the capability of OFDM systems. In this paper, a new generalized mathematical model for intercarrier and interblock interferences is derived for wireless mobile OFDM systems, in which Doppler frequency drift, local carrier frequency offset, multipath fading, and cyclic prefix coding are all present in reality. Such a new ICI/IBI model can be applied for OFDM performance evaluation in different environments. This new formulation of IBI and ICI provides a generalized framework which includes special ICI models appearing in the previous literature. Besides, the derived OFDM performance evaluation analysis in this paper can greatly benefit OFDM designers for wireless multimedia networks and digital video broadcasting technologies. Index Terms--Interference, OFDM, performance evaluation.

The intercarrier interference (ICI) matrix for the orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems usually has a fairly large dimension. The traditional least-square solution based on the pseudo-inverse operation, therefore, has its limitation. In addition, the provision of a sufficiently long training sequence to estimate the complete ICI matrix is not feasible, since it will result in severe throughput reduction. In this paper, we derive a lower bound for the mean-square estimation error among the least-square ICI matrix estimators using different training sequences and prove that the minimum mean-square error (MMSE) optimality is attained when the training sequences in different OFDM blocks are orthogonal to each other, regardless of the sequence length. We also prove that the asymptotical mean-square estimation error using the maximal-length shift-register sequences (m-sequences) as in the existing communication standards is 3 dB larger than that using the perfectly orthogonal sequences for ICI matrix estimation. Thus, we propose to employ the training sequences based on the Hadamard matrix to achieve a highly efficient and optimal ICI matrix estimator with minimum mean-square estimation error among all least-square ICI matrix estimators. Meanwhile, our new scheme involves only square computational complexity, while other existing least-square methods require the complexity proportional to the cube of the ICI matrix size. Analytical and experimental comparisons between our new scheme using Hadamard sequences and the existing method using m-sequences (pseudo-random sequences) show the significant advantages of our new ICI matrix estimator. The proposed method is most suitable for OFDM systems with large amount of subcarriers, using high order of subcarrier modulation, and designed for high-end of RF frequency band, where accurate ICI estimation is crucial. Index Terms--Channel estimation, Hadamard sequence, least-square solution, minimum mean-square error, m-sequence, OFDM, transceiver design.

OFDM has the advantage over the conventional single-carrier modulation schemes in the presence of frequency-selective fadings. Nevertheless, intercarrier-interference (ICI) due to Doppler frequency drift, phase offset, local oscillator frequency drift, and sampling clock offset will be a severe problem in the wireless OFDM systems. Previous ICI self-cancellation coding schemes can greatly reduce the ICI, but they are very sensitive to the phase ambiguity, which is due to the composite effect of the phase offset, the multipath fading and the local oscillator frequency drift. In this paper, a novel receiver which combines the current ICI self-cancellation coding techniques with a new pilot-free joint phase/amplitude estimation and symbol detection scheme is proposed. Based on the energy modulation or the irregular symbol constellation, our new technique does not have any requirement of pilot symbols and it can operate on all kinds of phase error ranges. The proposed scheme is promising in comparison with other existing methods at different noise levels through OFDM simulations. Index Terms--Amplitude estimation, Cramer-Rao lower bound, ICI self-cancellation, OFDM, phase estimation, pilot-free.

OFDM has been applied in the current wireless local-area networks and digital video broadcasting systems since it has the advantage over the conventional single-carrier modulation schemes when the frequency-selective fadings are present. Nevertheless, intercarrier-interference (ICI) due to Doppler frequency drift, phase offset, local oscillator frequency drift, and multipath fading will be a severe problem in OFDM systems. Previous ICI self-cancellation coding schemes can greatly reduce the ICI, but they are very sensitive to the phase ambiguity, which is due to the composite effect of the phase offset, the multipath fading and the local frequency drift. In this paper, the phase ambiguity and amplitude ambiguity problems in ICI self-cancellation coded OFDM receivers will be formulated and discussed. Then, a novel receiver which combines the current ICI self-cancellation coding techniques with a new expectation-maximization-based joint phase/amplitude estimation and symbol detection scheme is proposed. The outstanding performance of this proposed scheme is shown and compared with other existing methods at different noise levels through OFDM simulations. Index Terms--ICI self-cancellation, OFDM, phase estimation, symbol detection.

Current DVB-SH systems rely on hierarchical modulation to insert local content into the complementary ground component. The local content is inserted as a low priority bit stream, while the global content will be transmitted as a high-priority bit stream. At the receiver, the standard approach of extracting the local content from the received signal first requires detection of the global content. Subsequently, one can extract the local content by subtracting the coded and modulated form (restored version) of the detected global content from the received signal. In this paper, we propose a different approach to remove the global content from the received signal. In our new approach, a hybrid signal is designed to represent the turbo-coded global content, which contains decoded bits from the turbo decoder representing systematic bits, and detected bits from the received signal prior to the turbo decoder representing parity bits. This technique would relieve the receiver from performing coding and modulation on the detected global content so as to ensure a less computational burden and a smaller latency than the current technology. The obvious tradeoff between complexity and performance would imply higher bit error rates arising from our proposed system. Therefore, to mitigate the bit-error-rate performance degradation, we propose modifying the turbo decoder so that the systematic bit streams and the parity bit streams will be decoded differently with respect to their corresponding signal-to-noise ratios. Monte Carlo simulation results demonstrate that our proposed new scheme can achieve better computational efficiency and less latency in the slight sacrifice of error performance. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]