CD3-OFDM: a new channel estimation method to improve the spectrum efficiency in digital terrestrial television systems

The paper describes a novel channel estimation scheme (identified as CD3, coded decision directed demodulation) for coherent demodulation of OFDM (orthogonal frequency division multiplex) signals making use of any constellation format (e.g. QPSK, 16 QAM, 64 QAM). The structure of the CD3-OFDM demodulator is described, based on a new channel estimation loop exploiting the error correction capability of a forward error correction (FEC) decoder and frequency and time domain filtering to mitigate the effects of noise and residual errors. In contrast to the conventional coherent OFDM demodulation schemes, CD3-OFDM does not require the transmission of a comb of pilot tones for channel estimation and equalisation, therefore yielding a significant improvement in spectrum efficiency (typically between 5% and 15%). The performance of the system with QPSK and 64 QAM modulations is analysed by computer simulations, on AWGN and frequency selective channels. The results indicate that CD3-OFDM allows to achieve C/N performance similar to coherent demodulation with pilot tones, when the same channel coding and modulation scheme is adopted. Otherwise, when the additional capacity is exploited to increase the FEC redundancy instead of the useful bit-rate, CD3 can offer significant C/N advantages (typically from 2 to 5 dB depending on the channel characteristics). Therefore CD3-OFDM can be suitable for digital television broadcasting services over selective radio channels