Estimation of Basis Frequencies for Time-Varying SIMO Channels: A Second-Order Method

The complex exponential basis expansion model (CE-BEM) provides an accurate description for the time-varying (TV) channels encountered in mobile communications. Many blind channel identification and equalization approaches based on the CE-BEM require precise knowledge of the basis frequencies of TV channels. Existing methods for basis frequency estimation usually resort to the higher-order statistics of channel outputs and impose strict constraints on the source signal. In this paper, we propose a novel method to estimate the basis frequencies for blind identification and equalization of time-varying single-input multiple-output (SIMO) finite-impulse-response (FIR) channels. The proposed method exploits only the second-order statistics of channel outputs and does not require strong conditions on the source signal. As a result, it exhibits superior performance to the existing basis frequency estimation methods. The validity of our method is demonstrated by numerical simulations.