General hardware framework of Nakagami m parameter estimator for wireless fading channel

The Nakagami-m fading is well known in characterizing the envelop distribution in diverse wireless fading channels, and an accurate estimation of the m parameter is very crucial to evaluate the fading channel capacity. In this paper, we develop a hardware framework implanted in FPGA with corresponding interface design for the m parameter estimation of the Nakagami-m fading channel. Owing to the advantages of the high-speed hardware calculation, real-scenario estimation and the flexible system design, this newly developed framework can efficiently estimate the real m value with actual data base over a large frequency range. Moreover, it can be easily upgraded by software-based m parameter estimation methods through substituting the estimation algorithm. Most importantly, We evaluate our design with different m parameter estimation algorithms. The experiment results show that our design can properly adapt to different estimation algorithms and efficiently estimate the m value in both high-SNR and low-SNR regimes, thus allow us to observe the true variation of the channel state and make applications according to the observation, which is not attainable through software simulation.