Blind and nonblind turbo estimation for fast fading GSM channels

Wireless communication systems such as global system for mobile (GSM) communications are playing a growing role for data transmission. In order to ensure reliable transmission, the channel impulse response has to be estimated accurately. This is a difficult task particularly for fast fading channels caused by high-speed mobile units. We deal with the application of nonblind and blind channel estimation approaches to identify the full rate data Traffic CHannel (TCHF9.6) of GSM. We present a new iterative channel estimation scheme leading to a significant performance improvement especially for high-speed propagation with Doppler frequencies up to 500 Hz. Furthermore, it is shown that blind channel estimation schemes could be as efficient as nonblind methods when regarding bit error rates (BERs) after channel decoding in terms of the E¯_b/N₀ ratio. Moreover, a solution for the scalar ambiguity inherent in all blind estimation approaches is suggested