Low-complexity equalization of OFDM in doubly selective channels

Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems may experience significant inter-carrier interference (ICI) when used in time- and frequency-selective, or doubly selective, channels. In such cases, the classical symbol estimation schemes, e.g., minimum mean-squared error (MMSE) and zero-forcing (ZF) estimation, require matrix inversion that is prohibitively complex for large symbol lengths. An analysis of the ICI generation mechanism leads us to propose a novel two-stage equalizer whose complexity (apart from the FFT) is linear in the OFDM symbol length. The first stage applies optimal linear preprocessing to restrict ICI support, and the second stage uses iterative MMSE estimation to estimate finite-alphabet frequency-domain symbols. Simulation results indicate that our equalizer has significant performance and complexity advantages over the classical linear MMSE estimator in doubly selective channels.