Improved channel estimation for iterative receivers

In iterative receiver structures, soft information becomes available after the decoding stage. This information is used to enhance the quality of the channel estimates for the next iteration. We derive a generalized estimator based on the linear minimum mean square error (LMMSE) principle for deterministic pilot information combined with soft information. We present the special case of multi-carrier code division multiple access (MC-CDMA) in detail and provide simulation results. The presented channel estimation algorithm can be also applied to direct sequence (DS)-CDMA and multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems.