Singular Value Decomposition Channel Estimation in STBC MIMO-OFDM System

The multiple-input multiple-output orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (MIMO-OFDM) technology is the combination of the OFDM and MIMO technologies, which could improve the system capacity and make efficient utilization of the frequency spectrum. This paper utilizes space-time block coding (STBC) to achieve diversity gains and combat the channel fading. However, channel estimation is an essential block for space-time block decoding (STBD). Many channel estimation methods are utilized for the single antenna OFDM system, but they cannot be directly applied to the multiple antennas system due to the interference from other antennas. In this paper, orthogonal pilot sequences are designed to suppress the interference of pilot symbols from other transmit antennas. This paper also derives a minimum mean square error (MMSE) channel estimation method in MIMO-OFDM systems. The MMSE method involves the inverse operation of the channel autocorrelation matrix, which has a large calculation complexity. To further reduce the complexity of the MMSE method, the singular value decomposition (SVD) is used to decompose the channel autocorrelation matrix, which avoids the inverse operation. Simulation results verify that the SVD channel estimation method with comb-type pilots and STBC can be effectively adapted to multipath propagation conditions.