A Cross-Relation-Based Frequency-Domain Method for Blind SIMO-OFDM Channel Estimation

Single-input multiple-output (SIMO) orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is an appealing multi- carrier transmission technique for combating frequency-selective fading and increasing signal-to-noise ratio. To retrieve transmitted data correctly, reliable estimation of time-dispersive channels is important. This letter develops an improved cross-relation (CR) based blind SIMO-OFDM channel estimation method in the frequency domain. The significance of the proposed algorithm is twofold. First, it is highly data-efficient in that the SIMO-OFDM channels can be blindly identified using a single received data block. Second, the proposed method only requires an upper bound rather than the exact knowledge of the channel length. Simulation results show that the new method performs favorably compared to the existing CR- and subspace-based methods.