A pilot-aided channel estimation method for FBMC/OQAM communications system

Filter bank multicarrier (FBMC) modulation based on offset quadrature amplitude modulation (OQAM), known as FBMC/OQAM, is considered as an advancement to the conventional CP-OFDM (cyclic-prefix based orthogonal frequency division multiplexing) for wireless communications network. With well designed prototype filter and deletion of guard interval (GI), FBMC/OQAM can provide higher spectral efficiency than CP-OFDM. However, the orthogonality property of FBMC only holds in real field and an intrinsic inter-symbol-interference is observed in multi-path propagation channel. Thus, the classical channel estimation methods used for OFDM cannot be directly applied to FBMC/OQAM. In this paper, a new pilot-aided channel estimation method named MIAM and a new pilot design scheme for tile based sub-channel mode are proposed, which can reduce the interference and improve the channel estimation performance in FBMC/OQAM. Simulation results by using different channel estimation methods over the time-varying multi-path channel are provided in this paper.