Robust channel estimation for MIMO systems in flat fading channels

In wireless communication systems, the ambient channel noise is known through experimental measurements to be decidedly non-Gaussian, due largely to impulse phenomena. It is known, too, that when data are contaminated by non-Gaussian noise, the conventional MMSE channel estimation method may perform poorly. We develop robust channel estimation algorithms to combat the impulse noise in multiple input multiple output (MIMO) systems. Simulation results show that the robust channel estimation (RCE) method offers significant performance gain with little attendant increase in computational complexity compared with the MMSE channel estimation method in non-Gaussian channels. To implement RCE in practice, we also develop two approximate robust channel estimation (ARCE) methods.