Joint Least Squares Estimation of Frequency, DC Offset, I-Q Imbalance, and Channel in MIMO Receivers

Multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) receivers with direct-conversion radio-frequency (RF) architecture are investigated in this paper. Direct conversion is a low-cost RF design that requires fewer external components in chip implementation. Nevertheless, it introduces extra RF impairments such as I-Q imbalance and dc offset in addition to frequency offset that is commonly encountered in all RF architectures. This paper proposes to do the joint least squares (LS) estimation of frequency, dc offset, I-Q imbalance, and a channel in MIMO receivers to improve performance; frequency-dependent and frequency-independent I-Q imbalances are included. Previously, RF impairments were separately estimated in MIMO receivers, which leads to inferior performance. In particular, a receiver architecture that facilitates the joint estimation of the frequency, the dc offset, the I-Q imbalance, and the channel is proposed. The LS criterion is then applied to obtain the joint estimators, with a special training-sequence design to reduce complexity. Simplified estimators on the frequency and dc offset are also proposed with almost no loss in performance. Finally, the estimators are shown through analysis to be unbiased and approach the Cramer-Rao lower bound (CRLB) for signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) of interest. The analysis is verified by computer simulations.