Time-domain channel estimation for aeronautical OFDM system with impulsive interference

In order to mitigate impulsive interference for aeronautical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) system, an enhanced time-domain channel estimation is proposed in this paper. Firstly, the influence of impulsive interference to channel estimation is analyzed. According to theoretical results, impulsive interference could be connected with impulsive taps in channel impulse response (CIR). Then, based on impulsive taps in CIR, the influence of impulsive interference in channel estimation could be located and further mitigated. To this end, a threshold is given to detect and mitigate impulsive taps in CIR. Furthermore, with the help of impulsive taps detection, not only the channel estimation could be improved, but also the impulsive interference could also be pulse blanked (PB) more accurately. Simulation results confirm that better performance of the proposed algorithm, regarding mean square error (MSE) and bit error rate (BER), can be achieved compared to the traditional methods.