2012 Third International Workshop on the Performance Enhancements in MIMO OFDM Systems

Enhanced Channel Estimation Technique in

MIMO-OFDM System
M. A. Ahmed, S. A. Jimaa, and I.Y. Abualhaol
ECE Department, College of Engineering
Khalifa University of Science, Technology and Research
Sharjah,UAE
Email :{20059,saj}@kustar.ac.ae, ibrahimee@ieee.org

Abstract- Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) Orthogonal

Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM), MIMO-OFDM,

is considered as a spectrally efficient approach to achieve
high throughput communications. This paper investigates the
performance of MIMO-OFDM system using the proposed
NLMS adaptive equalizer and the developed Singular Value
Decomposition (SVD) technique in estimating the channel.
The performances of using various values of the NLMS
algorithms step-size were also investigated and an optimum
value, based on a trade-off between the convergence speed
and the steady state noise floor, was chosen. Then, the bit
error rate (BER) performance of the NLMS adaptive receiver
is compared with that of the SVD algorithm. It is clear that
the SVD gives better performance over the NLMS adaptive
filter.
Keywords- MIMO-OFDM; Adaptive Filter; NLMS; Step-Size; SVD

I.

INTRODUCTION

In a multi-channel system, frequency selective fading or

narrowband interference affects a small percentage of subchannels whereas in a single channel system, a single fade or
interference might cause the entire channel to fail. To realize
OFDM, we have to maintain orthogonality between subchannels (i.e., reducing crosstalk between them).
Orthogonality can be maintained using a cyclic prefix which
is the copy of the last part of an OFDM symbol. Cyclic prefix
will be appended to the transmitted symbol [1]. This
introduces a loss in the signal to noise ratio (SNR). However,
the zero inter channel interference (ICI) mitigates the loss.
Inter Symbol Interference (ISI) can be avoided using pulse
shaping. Raised cosine windowing of the transmitted pulses
will result into a sinc shaped frequency response of each subchannel where the roll off region acts as a guard interval.
Thus, the frequency spectrum of each sub-channel falls much
more quickly and therefore reduces the interference to the
adjacent frequency bands. In a discrete time model of an

978-1-4673-1430-5/12/$31.00 2012 IEEE

OFDM system, the modulation and the demodulation are

substituted with inverse FFT and FFT, thereby achieving
frequency division multiplexing by a baseband filtering
process. Furthermore, it will eliminate the banks of subchannels oscillators and coherent demodulators required by
frequency division multiplexing [2]. One of the simplest, yet
robust adaptive filter algorithms is the normalized least mean
square (NLMS). The weight vector of NLMS can be changed
automatically, while that of LMS cannot [3]. If the rate of
convergence is fast, the filter will be adapted quickly to a
stationary environment of unknown statistics. The most
important parameter that dominates the NLMS algorithm is
the step-size. If the step-size is set to a large value, the
convergence rate of NLMS algorithm will be fast. However,
the steady state MSE will increase. On the other hand, if the
step-size is set to a small value, the convergence rate will be
slow but the steady state MSE will decrease [4]. Recent
related work is given in [5] and [6]. In [5], only the MMSE
performances of using the NLMS adaptive algorithm for
different MIMO systems have been investigated. While in
[6], there is a new channel estimation method for OFDM by
combining LS and MMSE using Evolutionary Programming
was proposed. The realization of SVD algorithm has been
investigated in OFDM system [7], [8]. In this work we
evaluated the performance of the NLMS algorithm for
MIMO-OFDM system using various step-sizes and an
optimum step-size was chosen, based on a trade-off between
the convergence speed and the steady state MSE. Then, the
BER performance of the proposed NLMS adaptive receiver
with optimum step-size is compared with that of the
conventional receiver. In addition to that, the SVD algorithm
was studied and compared to the NLMS adaptive filter. The
remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Section II
introduces the system overview. Sections III, and IV describe
the system model and simulation results. Finally, Section V
concludes the paper.

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II.

SYSTEM OVERVIEW

The MIMO OFDM system was implemented with the aid

of MATLAB/SIMULINK. The execution process is binary
data that is modulated using BPSK and mapped into the
constellation points. The digital modulation scheme will
transmit the data in parallel by assigning symbols to each
sub-channel and the modulation scheme will determine the
phase mapping of sub-channels by a complex I-Q mapping
vector [7]. The complex parallel data stream has to be
converted into an analogue signal that is suited to the
transmission channel. This is performed by the Inverse Fast
Fourier Transform (IFFT). IFFT converts the signal to the
time domain since OFDM treats the transmitted symbols as
they are in the frequency domain. Assuming that the subchannels number is N, the transmitted symbol X(k) is
transformed to x(n) by IFFF as following:
!

summation operator from the previous expression. At the

receiver side, the received symbol yt(n) will be transformed
back to the frequency domain Y(k) by FFT after omitting the
cyclic prefix.
!

()

()

()

()

()

()

= , . . ,

= , ,

= [ , , , ! ]

= [, , , , , ,! ]

(5)

(6)

(7)

The desired response is

= ( + )()

(8)

According to the NLMS algorithm, the update procedure for

the weight vector wi(v) is characterized as

(2)

+ = + ()

(9)

Where ei(v) is the error for the ith sub-channels, i = 0,1,...,N-1

is the step-size parameter
=
()

(10)

The optimal value of the incremental change is obtained by

=
()

()
()

(11)

(3)
+ () =

The wireless fading channel consists of many parallel

Gaussian sub-channels; hence it can be expressed as
following:
!

A. NLMS Algorithm
The weight vector of an adaptive filter should be changed
in a minimal mechanism, subject to a constraint imposed on
the updated filters output. The NLMS algorithm is based on
the principal of minimal disturbance from one iteration to the
heading iteration [1]. Let the received symbol vector at time
associating to the vth OFDM symbol be

(1)

The symbols will follow into the fading channel with impulse
response h(n) that has additive noise n.
The MIMO OFDM system with At transmit and Ar receive
antennas can be described as:
()

=
()

The weight vector for the ith sub-channels, i = 0,1,...,N - 1 is

Each OFDM symbol is appended by a copy of 0.25% of IFFT

size to the original OFDM symbol resulting in making the
transmitted signal periodic, which plays a major role in
avoiding ISI and ICI. The transmitted symbol after adding the
cyclic prefix:
= 1,2
+ = ! , ! + 1, . .1

()
!

= , . . ,

! () =

(4)

Z is the number of paths for the signal propagation, hq is the

amplitude response of path q, fDq is the Doppler shift of path
q, q is the delay of path q. Single path fading will omit the

()
()

(12)

A constant value is appended to the denominator to avoid

that w(v+1) cannot be bounded when the tap-input vector y(v)
is too small, and then the final expression of NLMS can be
()
+ () =
(13)
+ ()
B. Step-Size
The stability of the NLMS filter depends on the step-size
parameter. Therefore, we have to find the optimum step-size
for the adaptive filter. The desired response is set as follows

546

+ + ()

(14)

Where u(v) is an unknown disturbance. An estimate of the

unknown parameter w is calculated from the tap-weight
vector w(v). The weight error vector is
= ()

(15)

where E[|e(v)|2] is the estimation of the error signal power.

E[|y(v)|2] is the estimation of the input signal power, is
the estimation of the mean-square deviation, is the stable
parameter and optimum is the optimum step-size parameter [8],
[9].
C. SVD Algorithm
We can simplify (3) as follows

By substituting (15) into (13), we obtain

()
+ =
+ ()

= +
(16)

The stability of the adaptive filter can be studied by

identifying the mean square deviation, denoting E as the
expected value

Where x represents ! dimensional transmitted symbol, n is

! noise vector, and H is the ! ! matrix of channel gains.
Channel gain matrix can be obtained at the receiver using
SVD decomposition.
~

(17)

(18)

Where () is the undisturbed error signal that can be written

as follows
= ()

(19)

()()/
[ / ]

= ! +
= ! ! +
= ! + !

(25)

Hence, the expression can be written as

(21)

By substituting (21) into (20)

<<

= !

(20)

For real valued data input, we can use the following equation

y =U H y

The transformation shown in Figure 1, transforms the MIMO

channel into ! parallel SISO channels with an input and
an output . From singular value decomposition and using
(24), we can have transmitter precoding and receiver shaping
as follows

The bounded range for the normalized step-size can be

obtained from (18) as follows

y = Hx+ n

Figure 1: General MIMO-OFDM system model with adaptive filter

based on NLMS algorithm

+ =

()()

x =V x

By substituting (16) into (17), we obtain

<<

(24)

= +

(26)

For 2x2 MIMO-OFDM system, we channel will be

< <

(22)

!
0

0
!

(23)

The result of the channel estimation is the

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(27)

decomposition of the channel as we multiply the

transmitter and receiver with a gain equal to the
summation of ! and ! .
III.

IV.

SYSTEM MODEL

IFFT
+
Appending
CP

Splitter

Rayleigh
Flat Fading
Channel
+
AWGN

Adder

FFT
+
Removing
CP

Baseband Demodulation

FFT
+
Removing
CP

Adaptive Receiver

Baseband Modulation

The simulation model of the MIMO-OFDM used in the

tests is shown in Fig. 2

Channel
Estimation

Figure 1: General MIMO-OFDM system model with adaptive filter based

on NLMS algorithm

The generated sub-channels will be modulated using BPSK,

the number of sub-channels is 64, and the number of the
cyclic prefix is 16 sub-channels. The transmitted symbols will
be sent by two antennas on the transmitter side and received
by two antennas on the receiver side. The symbols will pass
through a Rayleigh fading channel. The power will be
divided evenly among the two antennas at the transmitter.
The NLMS adaptive filter at the receiver will compensate the
effect of the communication channel on the transmitted
symbols. The adaptive NLMS receiver subsystem is shown in
Fig. 2. It comprises the OFDM demodulation, the NLMS
adaptive filter, and then the received symbols were
demodulated and I-Q de- mapped to obtain the original
transmitted symbols.
Optimized NLMS adaptive receiver
FFT
+
Removing
CP

Adder

Adaptive
NLMS Filter

SIMULATION RESULTS

The error performance of the aforementioned NLMS

algorithm is explored by performing extensive computer
simulations. In these simulations, we considered 2 by 2
MIMO-OFDM system. The data symbol is based on a BPSK
modulation. Various values of the algorithms step-size have
been used and the signal to noise ratio is 15 dB. The BER
performance of using different NLMS algorithm step-sizes on
the MIMO-OFDM has been investigated and the result is
shown in Fig. 3. It is clear that the step-sizes with values 0.3 0.5 give fewer errors.
Also the MSE performances, shown in Fig. 4, for various stepsizes have been investigated to measure the convergence
speed of the NLMS algorithm. It is clear that the step-size of
0.4 gives fast convergence and the step-size of 0.3 gives
lowest MSE level. Hence the step-size of 0.3 was chosen as
the best step-size since it provides a trade off between the
convergence speed and the steady state noise floor. Finally,
the BER performance versus Eb/No for step-sizes 0.3, 0.4, 0.5,
and 0.6 have been investigated and compared with that of the
conventional MIMO-OFDM receiver. It is clear that using the
conventional receiver (i.e., without using the NLMS adaptive
filter) the BER is almost 50% because the channel state
information is not known at the receiver. However, utilizing
the NLMS adaptive receiver structure greatly enhanced the
BER performance [10]. The BER performances of the
optimized NLMS adaptive equalizer against the SVD channel
estimation technique is shown in Fig. 6. The SVD curve with
full knowledge of the channel shows an identical result to the
theoretical result of the 2x2 MIMO-OFDM over Rayleigh
fading channel. The previous data shows a high skew and can
be comparable to the optimized NLMS adaptive equalizer.
Therefore, the current and the previous data can be added to
achieve a more realistic estimation of the channel. The
averaging of the current and the previous data proves a better
performance than a mere previous data. The SVD will
decompose the channel into parallel channels and the channel
will be multiplied by ! and ! to achieve a performance close
to the theoretical one.

Baseband
Demodulation

V.

FFT
+
Removing
CP

Figure 2: Adaptive filtering with NLMS algorithm

This subsystem has been used to investigate the effect of

varying the step-size of the NLMS adaptive filter algorithm on
the BER performance of the MIMO-OFDM system and
also to test the impact of utilizing the NLMS adaptive filter on
the BER performance.

CONCLUSION

The MSE and BER performances of the proposed NLMS

algorithm for MIMO-OFDM system over fading channels
were studied and extensive simulations results presented. The
BER performance of using different step-sizes for the NLMS
algorithm has been investigated and the results showed that
the step-sizes with the values of 0.3 - 0.5 give a minimum
BER. Also the developed SVD technique has been compared
with that of the proposed optimum step-size NLMS adaptive
algorithm and the results show that SVD outperforms the
NLMS adaptive algorithm.

548

10

10

-1

10

BER

BER

BER versus different step size for NLMS adaptive filter

-1

10

data1
BER without NLMS adaptive filter
Step Size = 0.3
Step Size = 0.4
Step Size = 0.5
Step Size = 0.6

-2

10

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5
0.6
Step Size

0.7

0.8

0.9

Figure 3: BER versus different step-size

-2

10

10

15

20

25

Eb/No

FIGURE 5: BER PERFORMANCE VERSUS EB/N0

1
Step Size = 0.3
Step Size = 0.4
Step Size = 0.5
Step Size = 0.6

0.9
0.8

10

MSE

0.7
-1

0.6

10

BER

0.5
0.4

-2

10

0.3
0.2

10

20

30

40
50
60
Number of Iterations

70

80

90

100

Figure 4: Convergence Speed performances for various step-sizes

VI.
[1]
[2]
[3]

[4]
[5]

[6]

data1
Averaging of SVD
Current and Previous SVD
SVD
Outdated SVD
NLMS with step-size = 0.3

-3

10

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5
Eb/No

10

Figure 6: BER performance versus Eb/N0 for SVD and NLMS

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