2013 International Conference on Advanced Electronic Systems (ICAES)

Channel Estimation and Equalization in OFDM

Receiver for WiMAX with Rayleigh Distribution
B. Siva Kumar Reddy and B. Lakshmi
Department of Electronics and Communications Engineering
National Institute of Technology, Warangal India
E-mail:lkodali93@gmail.com

Abstract- WiMAX is a broadband wireless access technol- II. RAYLEIGH FADING CHANNEL
ogy supports fixed and mobility services. WiMAX physical
layer is based on OFDM/OFDMA technologies. This paper In wireless telecommunications, multipath is the radio sig-
analyzes the Rayleigh fade distribution with various mod- nals achieving the receiving antenna by two or more paths.
ulating frequencies (fm ) by varying number of frequency The results of multipath admit constructive and destructive
samples. Least square (LS) and Linear Minimum Mean Square interference, and phase shifting of the signal. This results
Error (LMMSE) channel estimators are compared in terms of Rayleigh fading. The standard statistical model of this affords
BER, SNR and MSE (Mean Square Error) by varying channel a distribution known as the Rayleigh distribution. When all the
length. Blind Channel equalization is analyzed with CMA signal arriving the receiver are reflected signals, i.e. Rayleigh
(Constant Modulus Algorithm) and LMS (Least Minimum fading [7]. The bit error probability in the presence of channel
Square) algorithms in terms of convergence rate by varying (h) is,
⎛ ⎞
the smoothening length of the channel. The results proved 2E
1 |h| b⎠ 1 √
that without channel estimation BER is almost constant for Pb/h = erf c ⎝ = erf c( γ), (1)
all modulation schemes. 2 N0 2
Keywords: CMA, LS, LMS, LMMSE, MSE, OFDM, OFDMA 2
where γ = Effective bit energy to noise ratio = |h|N0Eb For a
I. INTRODUCTION Rayleigh channel, the BER using BPSK modulation is given
by
WiMAX is a wireless broadband access technology that  ∞ √
 
1 γ 1 γ̄
offers functioning similar to Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11) networks Pb = erf c γe−( γ̄ ) dγ = 1−
2γ̄ 0 2 γ̄ + 1
with the coverage and QoS (quality of service) of mobile  
networks [1]. WiMAX radio antenna technology coupled with 1 (Eb /N0 )
= 1−
the underlying benefits of OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency 2 (Eb /N0 ) + 1
Division Multiplexing)/ OFDMA (Orthogonal Frequency Di- (2)
vision Multiple Access) [2] based radios can be in range and
bandwidth capacity. Wireless systems are awaited to require
A. Rayleigh Exponential Distribution
high data rates with low delay and low bit-error-rate (BER). In
such situations, high data rate transmission and high mobility For some type of scattering environments, gI (t) and gQ (t)
of transmitters and/or receivers usually result in frequency- are at any time t1 are iid Gaussian random variables with zero
selective and time selective. Moreover, perfect channel state mean and variance b0 = E[gI2 (t1 )] = E[gQ 2
(t1 )]. This mailny
information (CSI) [3] is unavailable at the receiver. Thus in occurs in NLOS regions in rich scattering environments,
practice, exact estimation of the CSI has a major effect on isotropic antennas are used. Under such conditions, it leads
the whole system performance. To hold low bit error rates to Rayleigh fading. The envelope of received signal α =
and high data rates and in OFDM systems, the estimator |g(t1 )| = E[gI2 (t1 )] + E[gQ2 (t )] is Rayleigh distributed at
1
should have high accuracy and low complexity. The goal of any time t1 i.e.,
the channel least square (LS) estimator [4] is to reduce the
square distance between the received signal and the original x x2 2x x2
Pα (x) = exp{− }= exp{− }x ≥ 0, (3)
signal. The LMMSE (Linear Minimum Mean Square Error) [4] b0 2b0 Ωp Ωp
channel estimator is designed to reduce the estimation MSE. where Ωp = E(α2 ) = E[gI2 (t1 )] + E[gQ2
(t1 )] = 2b0 is the
Fading [5] relates to the variation of the signal amplitude over average envelope power. The squared envelope α2 at any time
time and frequency. The aim of an equalizer is to reduce the t1 has the exponential distribution is
Inter Symbol Interference (ISI) [6] as much as possible. Blind
1 x
channel equalizers employ properties in data format to retrieve Pα2 (x) = exp(− ) (4)
the transmitted symbol. Ωp Ωp

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 III. OFDM RECEIVER practical values are also increased. As modulating frequency
In the OFDM receiver, the data processed through RF increases, all the remaining values are increased. If r0 =1,
hardware and converted to analog to digital data by ADC average fade duration theoretical and practical values are
block. The received samples are converted to serial to parallel nearly equal. As r0 increases, the difference between Nr
and Cyclic Prefix (CP) is removed in the Remove CP block. theoretical and practical values decreases. When fm increases,
The Fast Fourier Transformer (FFT) assumes the well-timed the difference between Nr theoretical and practical values
OFDM symbols and translates them from the time domain reduce greatly. The extraction of symbols is easy, when the
to the frequency domain by employing a Fourier transform. frequency symbols are lesser than time samples, shown in
The pilots are extracted from the symbol. Both continuous Fig. 3. When N > M and N=M, power distribution is more,
pilots and scattered pilots may be employed to aid the receiver the difference between theoretical and practical values is very
to guess the channel for each sub-carrier position. Channel high, the extraction of symbols is difficult (shown in Fig. 1).
estimation is executed. Information, typically from the inserted For r0 = 1, Nr theoretical value is always 27.6641.
pilots, is employed to derive an estimate of the distortion TABLE II
developed by the channel for each active sub-carrier of the PARAMETERS DEFINED
OFDM symbol. As already mentioned, for an OFDM receiver,
the channel estimate is typically a single complex value Parameters Values
per active sub-carrier. The channel estimate is reversed and FFT size (NFFT) 1024
the equalizer applies this to cancel, as best as possible, the Occupied Tones 896
distortion inserted by the channel and restore each OFDM Sampling rate 10.66667 M
sub-carrier to that which was produced in the transmitter. All Center Frequency 2.48 GHz
the reverse operations are performed in the receiver side. Convolutional Code 1/2
Cyclic Prefix length 184
IV. CHANNEL ESTIMATION Useful symbol duration 91.43 μs
A. LSE channel estimation Carrier spacing (1/Tu ) 10.94 KHz
In LSE channel estimator, an estimation filter is designed Guard time 11.43 μs
with available data only. In this estimation, probabilistic as- (Tg=(1/4)* Tu)
sumptions are not required, signal model is only used. LSE OFDM symbol 102.86 μ s
channel estimation is [4], duration
Digital BPSK, QPSK,16QAM,
h¯ls = F Qls F H X H y, (5) Modulations 64QAM,256QAM
where Qls = (F H X H XF )−1 .
Fig.2 shows the Blind channel equalizer performance with
B. LMMSE channel estimation LMS algorithm. By varying the smoothening channel length
In the presence of channel noise, LMMSE estimation of (L), the error rates for both algorithms are tabulated in Table
uncorrelated Gaussian channel vector g is [4] , 3. It can be concluded that the convergence rate is less for
CMA (Constant Magnitude Algorithm) algorithm compared to
ḡ = Γgy Γ−1
yy y, (6) LMS algorithm. Error rate is more for CMA than LMS. Fig.
where Γgy = Γgg F H X H , Γyy = XF Γgg F H X H + σn2 IN 3 shows the BER performance for Rayleigh fading channel
For unique minimum MSE, above covariance matrices should [7] for 16QAM modulation scheme respectively with 1024
be positive definite. Γgy , Γyy are cross- covarience and auto- IFFT/FFT size. From Table 4, it can be concluded that, without
covarience matrices and σ 2 is variance. In frequency domain, channel estimation the BER has constant performance for
channel estimation is, all modulation schemes in Rayleigh fade and Rician fade
[7] channels. BER value decreases, as SNR increases but
h̄mmse = F ḡ = F QF H X H y, (7) increasing SNR is a tradeoff in low power systems.
where Q=Γ[(F H X X XF )−1 σn2 + Γgg ], F is DFT orthonormal.
V. SIMULATION RESULTS
The required OFDM parameters [2] for WiMAX [1] are
tabulated in Table 1. Depends upon the channel state condi-
tions proper modulation scheme has been selected in WiMAX
physical layer. Rayleigh fade signal [7] parameters are varied
with number of frequency samples (N), modulating frequency
(fm ) and r0 values, shown in Table 2. The results show that,
to make RMS theoretical and practical values equal, set r0 =1. Fig. 1. Rayleigh fading signal with 10240 frequency samples (N>M).
As r0 decreases, the difference between RMS theoretical and

2013 International Conference on Advanced Electronic Systems 3

 TABLE I
R ESULTS OBTAINED FOR R AYLEIGH FADE SIGNAL DISTRIBUTION WITH fm , r0

Freq. Freq. r0 Nr Nr Avg fade Avg fade RMS RMS

Samples selected value value duration duration practical Theoretical
(N) (in Hz) Practical Theoretical practical value value
256 30 0.100 4.9219 7.4451 0.0018 0.0013 -64.2889 -74.2889
256 30 0.01 0 0.7519 Nan 1.3299e-004 -64.0791 -84.0791
256 30 1 25.3125 27.6641 0.2523 0.0223 -64.2689 -64.2689
256 100 0.100 25 24.8139 4.590e-004 4.009e004 -69.4977 -79.3078
256 100 1 84.3750 92.2137 0.0076 0.0069 -69.4977 -69.4977
1024 30 0.01 0 0.7519 Nan 1.3299e-004 -58.3699 -78.3699
1024 30 1 27.7734 27.6641 0.0227 0.0228 -58.4080 -58.4080
1024 900M 1 8.736e008 8.2992e008 7.234e-010 7.6166e-010 -132.7984 -132.7984
8192 30 1 13.0005 27.6641 0.0483 0.0228 -49.0855 -49.0855
10240 30 1 11.1035 27.6641 0.0567 0.0228 -50.5597 -50.5597

TABLE III
B LIND CHANNEL EQUALIZATION

smoothening CMA algorithm LMS algorithm

channel length Error rate Error rate
10 2 1.4
30 3.2 1.5
50 4 1.7

TABLE IV
BER V S SNR PERFORMANCE FOR CHANNELS Fig. 3. Rayleigh fading channel performance for 16QAM modulation scheme.

Modulation Rayleigh Rayleigh Rician Rician

scheme 30dB 45dB 30dB 45dB than LMMSE in terms of SNR values. Blind channel equal-
BPSK 0.0316 0.0010 0.0630 0.01 ization is used whenever there is no available training data, and
QPSK 0.0501 0.0015 0.0794 0.00154 no knowledge about coming data. From the results, it can be
16QAM 0.10115 0.00316 0.11748 0.01047 concluded that CMA performs slower than LMS algorithm.
64QAM 0.10471 0.01584 0.13182 0.02691 In this paper, Rayleigh and Rician fading channels BER
256QAM 0.15848 0.06309 0.16595 0.1 performance has analyzed with and without channel estimators
for various modulation schemes.
R EFERENCES
[1] Ergen, Mustafa, ”Mobile broadband: including WiMAX and LTE,”
Springer, 2009.
[2] Vishal, A Wankhede and Rakesh, Jha and Dalal, Upena ”Resource
allocation for downlink OFDMA in WiMAX systems,” Proceedings of
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Security, pp. 82-85, 2011.
[3] Reddy, B Siva Kumar and Lakshmi, B ”Adaptive Modulation and
Coding in COFDM for WiMAX Using LMS Channel Estimator,” 2013.
[4] Tong, Zheng Rong and Guo, Min Jie and Yang, Xiu Feng and Zhang,
Wei Hua, ”Performance Comparison of LS and LMMSE Channel
Estimation Algorithm for CO-OFDM System,” Applied Mechanics and
Materials, vol 130, page 2965–2968, 2012.
Fig. 2. Blind channel equalization performance with LMS algorithm with [5] Molisch, Andreas F, ”Wireless communications,” Communications
smoothning length 10. Letters, IEEE, vol 15, 2010.
[6] Dent, Paul W,”COMPENSATION OF DIAGONAL ISI IN OFDM
SIGNALS.”EP Patent 2,253,111, 2010.
[7] Mountassir, Jamal and Balta, Horia and Oltean, Marius and Kovaci,
VI. CONCLUSION Maria and Isar, Alexandru, ”A physical layer simulator for WiMAX
in Rayleigh fading channel,” Applied Computational Intelligence and
In this paper LS and LMMSE channel estimators perfor- Informatics (SACI), 2011 6th IEEE International Symposium on, pages
mance has compared in terms of channel length, BER and 281–284, 2011.
MSE. LS estimator has good BER performance and LMMSE
has better MSE performance. LS shows better performance

2013 International Conference on Advanced Electronic Systems 3