Joint Estimation of the Ricean K-Factor and the SNR for SIMO Systems Using Higher Order Statistics

Abstract-In this paper, we propose a joint estimator of the Ricean K-factor and the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) for singleinput multiple-output (SIMO) systems. The second-order moment and the fourth-order cross-moment matrix of the received signal envelope are used to estimate the desired parameters. The K-factor is estimated using the kurtosis of the Ricean channel gain while the SNR is obtained by separately estimating the powers of the useful signal and the additive noise. Two versions are developed depending on the value of the kurtosis of the transmitted data. Unlike the autocorrelation-based K-factor and SNR joint estimator developed in [1] that is tailored for unmodulated signals, the proposed method applies to any digital modulation and does not request the knowledge of the maximum Doppler spread. Simulation results are included to illustrate the performance behavior of the new estimator.