Performance of Simple Pilot-Symbol-Aided Algorithms Over Mobile Radio Channels

This paper studies the effectiveness of three simple pilot-symbol-aided (PSA) algorithms on the bit-error-rate (BER) performance of 16QAM over land-mobile and satellite-mobile channels. The three algorithms are the ordinary zeroth-order algorithm, the improved zeroth-order algorithm, and the linear extrapolation algorithm. Computer simulation results have shown that, for the linear extrapolation algorithm, the improvement (compared to the ordinary zeroth-order algorithm) is more significant for short frame lengths and in land-mobile channels. For the improved zeroth-order algorithm, the improvement increases as the frame length increases. The distinct advantages of these algorithms are simple implementation and require no storage element for the received data symbols, which are important for many real-time multimedia applications.