Convergence analysis of code-aided channel estimation by means of transfer charts

In this paper, we investigate the convergence behavior of code-aided channel estimation, also denoted as joint iterative channel estimation and decoding. A mutual information transfer chart is introduced in order to trace the information exchange between channel estimator and decoder throughout the iterative process. Furthermore, a heuristic concept to improve code-aided channel estimation is introduced that outperforms the classical concepts and has the major advantage that it allows for accurate convergence analysis.