Channel Estimation for Multiple-Antenna Wireless Communications [Wireless Corner]

This paper addresses the issue of channel estimation (CE) for multiple antennas. Multi-antenna systems at the transmitter and/or receiver can improve the receiver´s performance in the presence of fading. Comparing space-time coding (STC) schemes and the receiving diversity (RD) scheme employed at the receiver, simulation results indicate that space-time coding is less robust to the channel-estimation error than receiving diversity. The linear minimum-mean-squared error (LMMSE) estimator outperforms its least-squares (LS) counterpart. Using a low-rank linear minimum-mean-squared error estimator, the computational complexity is reduced compared to a full-rank linear minimum-mean-squared error estimator, while showing good performance.