Circuits and Systems: An International Journal (CSIJ), Vol. 1, No.

1, January 2014

COMPARISON OF CHANNEL ESTIMATION AND

EQUALIZATION TECHNIQUES FOR OFDM SYSTEMS
Sanjana T and Suma M N

Department of Electronics and communication, BMS College of Engineering, Bangalore,

India

ABSTRACT
In OFDM (Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing) systems, channel estimation and channel
equalization play a key role in overcoming distortions caused by phenomena like fading, delay spread and
multipath effect. In this paper, channel estimation and equalization techniques are analyzed to improve the
performance of OFDM system. The channel estimation techniques considered here are estimation using
wiener filter and frequency domain approach. Prior Channel estimation leads to simple equalization. The
channel equalization techniques employed here are based on LMS algorithm and one tap frequency domain
equalization, under different channels; AWGN, Rayleigh and Rician channels. Eye patterns for different
channels are compared in simulation. It is observed from simulation that wiener filter provides better
estimation and OFDM performance is better under AWGN channel than fading channels. SER curves
shows 6dB improvement in AWGN performance than fading channels to achieve 0.1 SER. In addition, MSE
performance shows fast convergence for AWGN channel.

KEYWORDS
AWGN, channel estimation, LMS, OFDM.

1. INTRODUCTION
OFDM technology is a popular technique for transmission of signals over wireless channels, due
to its many advantages such as the high spectral efficiency, robustness to frequency selective
fading, and the feasibility of low-cost transceiver implementations [1].

As channel estimation and equalization is found to greatly affect the performance of OFDM
systems, they are considered as a prime subject of analysis in this paper. In this paper the channel
estimation is done prior to demodulation using wiener filter which uses the autocorrelation and
cross-correlation of input and output sequences to determine the channel. Later, channel
equalization is done in one step using frequency domain approach. Then the simulations are
carried out for AWGN, Rayleigh and Rician channels.

The outline of this paper is organized as follows. In Section II, the OFDM systems are briefly
introduced. Then the channel estimation technique used in the simulations is discussed in Section
III. Section IV discusses the channel equalization in general and also with respect to OFDM.
Simulation results and its analyses are presented in Section V, and finally conclusions are given
in Section VI.

2. OFDM SYSTEM MODEL

OFDM is a special case of multi-carrier transmission where a single data stream is
transmitted over a number of low rate subcarriers. The idea of OFDM is to split the total

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 Circuits and Systems: An International Journal (CSIJ), Vol. 1, No. 1, January 2014
transmission bandwidth into a number of orthogonal subcarriers in order to transmit symbols
using these subcarriers in parallel. OFDM has become the basis of many telecommunication
standards including wireless local area networks (LANs), digital terrestrial television (DTT) and
digital radio broadcasting in much of the world [2].

2.1 Description of Basic OFDM System

OFDM signal is generated by modulating the input data using QAM (Quadrature
amplitude modulation). QAM is used here because it is efficient in conserving bandwidth. After
modulation serial to parallel conversion is made and symbols are mapped on to orthogonal
subcarriers using IFFT (Inverse Fast Fourier Transform). Cyclic prefix (which is typically a
repetition of the last samples of data portion of the block that is usually appended to the beginning
of the data payload) is added after parallel to serial conversion. Cyclic prefix is useful in
maintaining orthogonality and thus helps in eliminating ICI (Inter-Carrier Interference); it also in
addition eliminates the ISI (Inter Symbol Interference) effect.

At the receiver end, cyclic prefix is removed and serial to parallel conversion is done. The
FFT of each symbol is then taken to convert the received signal back to frequency domain. After
this, by proper channel estimation and equalization the original transmitted spectrum is found.
Later, parallel to serial conversion is done and then finally demodulation is carried out. The
generic base-band discrete-time block diagram of the OFDM transceiver system depicting the
above described procedure is shown in Figure 1.

Add cyclic
QAM Serial to Sk( N-pt xk( Parallel prefix
modulatio parallel IFFT 1) to serial
Binary n converte
1)
converte
data
r Sk( xk( r
2) 2)
Sk( xk(
Transmission
N) Channel N) multipath
estimation channel

ck( yk(
rk (
QAM Parallel 1) Channel N-pt 1) Serial to Remove
demodulatio to serial equalizatio 1) FFT parallel cyclic
Decoded n converte n converte prefix
data r r

Figure1.ckBlock
( diagram ofrkan
( OFDM ysystem
k(
N) N) N)
3. CHANNEL ESTIMATION
In case of OFDM systems, a dynamic estimation of channel is very much necessary
before the demodulation since the radio channel is frequency selective and time-varying for wide
band mobile communication systems [3]. In literatures it is found that a simpler way of estimating
the channel is through the use of wiener filter (WF). Wiener filters are basically a class of
optimum linear filters which involve linear estimation of a desired signal sequence from another

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 Circuits and Systems: An International Journal (CSIJ), Vol. 1, No. 1, January 2014
related sequence. The coefficients of a Wiener filter are calculated to minimize the average
squared distance between the filter output and a desired signal. The Wiener-Hopf equation which
forms the basis of wiener filter is given as

= (1)

Using this channel estimation is made as follows

= (2)

Where is autocorrelation matrix of input sequence, and is cross-correlation matrix between

filter input and desired response, indicates wiener filter coefficients.

Channel estimation can also be done using frequency domain (FD) approach. It mainly
decreases the computational complexity that is found in time domain. The input-output
relationship in frequency domain is given by equation (3).

= ( ) + = ( ) + (3)

Where Y, X and H are N-length FFT’s of y (output), x (input) and h (channel) respectively and N
is additive white Gaussian noise. is the matrix which contains first P+1 columns of Q (Q is
× DFT matrix). Both the above channel estimation techniques are compared using a
common channel in MATLAB.

4. CHANNEL EQUALIZATION
Channel equalization is the process of reducing amplitude, frequency and phase distortion
in a channel with the intent of improving transmission performance. The basic operation of
channel equalization is to inverse the effect of the channel. As it can be seen in Fig.1 channel
equalization is always carried out after channel estimation.

Adaptive equalization is a technique that automatically adapts to the time varying

properties of the communication channel. LMS algorithm is one such popular technique that can
be used for adaptive channel equalization. The criterion used in this algorithm is to minimize the
Mean Square Error (MSE) between the desired equalizer output and the actual equalizer output
[4].

= − (4)

The LMS algorithm seeks to minimize the mean square error given in the equation (4). The basic
equation which is iteratively used in LMS algorithm is

( + 1) = ( ) − ∗ ( ) ( ) (5)
In equation (5), ( )is the input signal, ( ) is the equalizer filter taps and α indicates the step-
size. The parameter α controls the convergence rate of the algorithm. The output of the filter with
the LMS algorithm approximated weights is the equalized signal and is as given in equation (6).

( )= ( ) ( ) (6)

The channel equalization using LMS algorithm is done as shown in Figure 2. In the block
diagram, input is generated by random number generator(1) and it is passed through the channel.
Random number generator(1) after suitable delay also supplies the desired response applied to the

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 Circuits and Systems: An International Journal (CSIJ), Vol. 1, No. 1, January 2014
adaptive equalizer in the form of training sequence. Random number generator(2) serves as a
source of additive white noise that corrupts the channel output. These two random generators are
independent of each other. The adaptive equalizer (which is implanted using LMS algorithm) has
the task of correcting the distortion produced by the channel in the presence of noise [6]. The
difference between the equalizer output and the reference signal (delayed input signal) is used by
the LMS algorithm to minimize the mean square error between the actual output and desired
output. In this way LMS equalizes the channel output.

Delay

+
Random Channel Adaptive
number ∑ transversal ∑
generator [1] Equalizer
-

Random
number
generator [2]

Figure 2. Block diagram of adaptive channel equalization [6]

In Figure 2 the channel used can be AWGN, Rayleigh or Rician. Thus it is necessary to discuss
each of these channel models. The AWGN channel is simply represented as

= +
(7)
Where n is the Guassian random noise and x is the input, y is output.

The Rayleigh channel is as depicted in equation 8.

( )= (− ) (8)

Where is the sample function of Rayleigh distributed random process and σ is the variance.
The received signal after passing through the Rayleigh channel can be depicted in two equivalent
ways as in equation 9 and 10.

( )
̂( ) = ∑ ( )cos {2 [ − ( )]} (9)

Where ( ) and ( ) are gain factor and delay for a specific path i at specific time t. Equation
(10) can be equivalently written as:

̂( ) = ( )cos [2 + ( )] (10)

Where ( ) and ( ) are amplitude and phase from a particular measurement of a Rayleigh
distributed random process.
The Rician channel is best described by its probability density function (PDF) given by
the equation 11.

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 Circuits and Systems: An International Journal (CSIJ), Vol. 1, No. 1, January 2014

( ) = exp ( ) (11)

= = (12)

Where (. ) is a zero order modified Bessel function.

Channel equalization can also be carried out in frequency domain. In case of OFDM,
since each subchannel has a different gain, one-tap gain adjustment can be applied to compensate
subchannel scaling. Equalization is used to facilitate the use of same modular decision device on
all subchannels [5]. The one-tap equalization is so simple that it can be described in just one
equation. Equation (13) shows how the one-tap channel equalization is done.
= ( ) = ( ) (13)

Where Y, hf and X are FFT’s of output signal, channel and input signal to the channel. From the
equation it can be inferred that channel needs to be known. Thus for one-tap equalization proper
channel estimation is essential. But in case of LMS algorithm, only with the help of desired signal
and channel output, the equalizer taps are found by an iterative method and that is used to find the
equalized signal.

5. SIMULATION RESULTS
In this section, simulations for wiener filter channel estimation and equalization using
LMS and frequency domain approach are carried out. Once the channel is known by estimation,
equalization becomes simple.

5.1 Channel estimation

Channel estimation is first performed by Weiner filter method and frequency domain method.
The estimated coefficients for both the techniques are shown in table 1. The comparison of
estimated coefficients obtained using the two estimation techniques are also shown graphically in
Figure 3. It can be inferred from the table that wiener filter channel estimation is more accurate in
estimating channel coefficients.
Table 1. Comparison between WF Estimation and FD Estimation.

Type of channel Actual channel Estimated coefficients

estimation coefficients
Weiner filter [ 0.3000 ,-0.5000, [0.3000, -0.5000 0.0000, 1.0000
0. 1.0000 , 0.2000, 0.2000, -0.3000]
-0.3000]

Frequency domain [ 0.3000 ,-0.5000, [0.3002,-0.4990,-0.0004. 0.9974

approach 0. 1.0000 , 0.2000, 0.1977, -0.2983
-0.3000]

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 Circuits and Systems: An International Journal (CSIJ), Vol. 1, No. 1, January 2014

Figure 3. Actual and estimated coefficients for FD estimation and WF estimation.

5.2 Channel Equalization

Channel equalization using LMS algorithm is performed as shown in Figure 2. The

results are shown in Fig.4 for channel being raised-cosine filter.

1 + cos ( − 2) , = 1,2,3
( )= (14)
0,
where ( )is the impulse response of the raise-cosine channel, W is a parameter that controls the
amount of amplitude distortion produced by the channel. W controls the eigenvalue spread of the
autocorrelation matrix of the tap inputs in the equalizer, with eigenvalue spread increasing with
W.
The Figure 4 shows the simulation result for three values of W i.e. 2.9, 3.3 and 3.5. The
plot shows that as W increases the MSE converges to a large value. The channel in Figure 2 is
replaced with AWGN, Rayleigh and Rician channels and their effects are illustrated in Figure 5.
It can be seen from the plot that AWGN channel converges faster than Rayleigh and Rician
channels.

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 Circuits and Systems: An International Journal (CSIJ), Vol. 1, No. 1, January 2014
Com paris on of different am plitude dis tortions
0
10
w= 2.9
w= 3.3
w= 3.5

-1
10

mse

-2
10

-3
10
0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450 500
num ber of iterations

Figure 4. Output of adaptive equalizer using α=0.025, M=11

Com parison of different channels

1
10
AW GN channel
Rician channel
Rayleigh channel
0
10

-1
m se

10

-2
10

-3
10
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 200
num ber of iterations

Figure 5. Output with AWGN, Rayleigh and Rician channel

SER (symbol error rate) plots of OFDM system with channel estimation made using wiener filter
under AWGN; Rayleigh and Rician channels are compared and shown in Figure 6. Rayleigh
channel is found to give a better output compared to Rician channel. To achieve SER of 0.1, 6dB
additional requirement of SNR required with fading channel compared to AWGN.

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 Circuits and Systems: An International Journal (CSIJ), Vol. 1, No. 1, January 2014
com parison of different channels in ofdm system
0
10

-1
10

-2
ser 10

-3
10

AW GN channel
Rician channel
Rayleigh channel
-4
10
2 4 6 8 10 12 14
snr(db)

Figure 6. SER plots comparing three different channels in OFDM systems.

The eyepatterns of different channels are analyzed. As it can be seen, the eye diagram
also shows that in AWGN channel Inte symbol Interference is less than Rayleigh and Rician.
The eyepattern in general depicts various characteristics like jitter, delay, quality factor, SNR etc.
Eye opening (i.e. height, peak to peak) measures the additive noise; eye overshoot depicts the
peak distortion due to interruptions on the signal path. Eye width gives the time synchronization
and jitter effects and the eye closure measures the ISI (Inter symbol interference) and additive
noise. The eye closure is observed in both Rayleigh and Rician channels depicting its worst
performance. The eye patterns of AWGN, Rayleigh and Rician are shown in Figure 7, 8 and 9
respectively.
Eye Diagram
1

0.8

0.6

0.4

0.2
Amplitude

-0.2

-0.4

-0.6

-0.8

-1
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5
Time

Figure 7. Eye pattern of AWGN channel

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 Circuits and Systems: An International Journal (CSIJ), Vol. 1, No. 1, January 2014
Eye Diagram
0.5

0.4

0.3

0.2

0.1

Amplitude
0

-0.1

-0.2

-0.3

-0.4

-0.5
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5
Time

Figure 8. Eye pattern of Rayleigh channel

Eye Diagram
0.5

0.4

0.3

0.2

0.1
Amplitude

-0.1

-0.2

-0.3

-0.4

-0.5
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5
Time

Figure 9. Eye pattern of Rician channel

6. CONCLUSION

In this paper, OFDM system is analyzed with channel estimation and equalization under
different channels. Wiener filter estimation and one-tap equalization in frequency domain were
found to perform well for OFDM system. Simulation results show weiner filter is better method
of estimation that has reduced the equalization complexity. Eye diagram shows severity of
Intersymbol Interference in Rician channel and Rayleigh channel than AWGN. BER curves
shows performance under different channels.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work has been supported as part of the project work by BMSCE, Bangalore.

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 Circuits and Systems: An International Journal (CSIJ), Vol. 1, No. 1, January 2014

REFERENCES
[1] Tian-Ming Ma, Yu-Song Shi, and Ying-Guan Wang, “A Low Complexity MMSE For OFDM
Systems Over Frequency Selective Fading Channels”, IEEE Communications Letters, VOL. 16, NO.
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[2] Manushree Bhardwaj, Arun Gangwar and Devendra Soni, “A Review on OFDM: Concept, Scope &
its Applications”, IOSR Journal of Mechanical and Civil Engineering (IOSRJMCE), ISSN : 2278-
1684 Volume 1, Issue 1 (May-June 2012), PP 07-11.
[3] SinemColeri, Muthafa Ergen, Anuj Puri and Ahmad Bahai, “A study of Channel Estimation in OFDM
system”, IEEE VTC, 2003.
[4] K. Elangovan, “Comparative study on the channel estimation for OFDM system using LMS, NLMS
and RLS algorithms”, Proceedings of International conference on Pattern Recognition, Informatics
and Medical Engineering, March 21-23, 2012.
[5] John G. Proakis, “Digital Communications”, third edition, McGraw-Hill Book Co. pp. 767–768,
ISBN 0-07-113814-5.
[6] Simon Haykin, “Adaptive filter theory”, fourth edition, Pearson education, pp.285-291, ISBN 978-
81-317-0869-9, 2008.

Authors

First author- Sanjana.T

Second author-Suma.M.N

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