15th European Signal Processing Conference (EUSIPCO 2007), Poznan, Poland, September 3-7, 2007, copyright by EURASIP
JOINT ESTIMATION OF I/Q IMBALANCE AND CHANNEL RESPONSE FOR MIMO
OFDM SYSTEM
Yuan-Hwui Chung, See-May Phoong
Dept. of Electrical Engr. and Grad. Inst. of Communication Engr.
National Taiwan Univ., Taiwan, ROC 106
ABSTRACT
In this paper, we study joint estimation of in-phase and
quadrature-phase (I/Q) imbalance and channel response
for multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) orthogonal fre-
quency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems using train-
ing sequence. A new class of optimal sequences, called
circularly-shift orthogonal sequences, are introduced for es-
timating the MIMO channels. By using the newly proposed
sequences, the channel coefficients can be obtained by mul-
tiplying the received vectors with an M × M unitary circu-
lant matrix, which can be computed efficiently using FFT.
Then, we develop a new method for jointly estimating the
MIMO channel responses and I/Q imbalance. The proposed
time-domain method needs only one OFDM training block.
Simulation results show that the proposed method can accu-
rately estimate both the I/Q imbalance and MIMO channel
response.
1. INTRODUCTION
Multiple-input multiple-output orthogonal frequency divi-
sion multiplexing (MIMO OFDM) has drawn a lot of atten-
tion due to its high data rate and low complexity. These
advantages are based on the assumptions that the receiver
has exact channel information and the system parameters at
the transmitter and receiver are perfectly matched. One of
these parameters is the so-called I/Q imbalance due to the
mismatch of local oscillators. It was shown in [1] that I/Q
imbalance can cause severe inter-carrier-interference and it
leads to a serious performance degradation. By carefully de-
signing the OFDM training blocks, several methods for esti-
mating the I/Q imbalance have been proposed in [1]. In [2],
based on the assumption that the channel frequency response
is smooth, a frequency-domain approach for jointly estimat-
ing the I/Q imbalance and channel response for OFDM sys-
tems is proposed. Recently, a time-domain method for jointly
estimating the I/Q imbalance and channel response in OFDM
systems is proposed in [3]. The time-domain method exploits
the fact that the channel length is usually much shorter than
the OFDM block. Both the two methods in [2] and [3] need
only one arbitrary OFDM training block and they achieve
very good performance.
Channel estimation for MIMO OFDM system has been
studied by many researchers [4][5][6]. The authors in [4]
showed that the optimal training sequences from different
transmit antennas must be orthogonal. Various conditions for
the existence of the orthogonal sequences are derived in [5].
A frequency-domain approach for the channel estimation is
This work was supported in part by the National Science Council of
Taiwan, R.O.C., under Contracts NSC95-2752-E-002-006-PAE and NSC95-
2213-E-002-075
©2007 EURASIP
proposed in [6]. These channel estimation methods assume
that all the other system parameters are perfectly matched at
the transmitter and receiver. Recently, the I/Q imbalance for
the MIMO OFDM system has been investigated in [7]. The
authors show that the MIMO OFDM system would suffer an
error flooring due to I/Q imbalance. The compensation of the
I/Q imbalance for MIMO OFDM system is studied in [8][9].
The authors proposed various methods to estimate the I/Q
imbalance, but they usually need more one training blocks.
In this paper, we first propose a special class of optimal
sequeqnces for estimating MIMO channels. Then we con-
sider the problem of jointly estimating the channel response
and I/Q imbalance. The time-domain approach in [3] is ex-
tended to the MIMO case. The proposed method has the ad-
vantages that it needs only one OFDM training block. Sim-
ulation results show that our method can accurately estimate
the channel response and I/Q imbalance.
Notation: Boldfaced lower and upper case letters rep-
resent vectors and matrices respectively. The notation A†
denotes transpose-conjugate of A and AT denotes the trans-
pose of A. A∗ denotes the complex conjugate of A. W
is the M × M normalized DFT matrix with entries [W]k,l =
2π
√1 e− j M kl . ((x))M means x modulo M.
M
2. SYSTEM DESCRIPTION
2.1 Effect of IQ Imbalance on The Received Signals
We consider the transmission of the discrete-time sequence
x(n) through an LTI channel h(n) with additive noise q(n).
The received signal is given by
L−1
r(n) = ∑ h(l)x(n − l) + q(n). (1)
l=0
Suppose now there is I/Q imbalance due to the mismatch of
local oscillators:
Osc(t) = cos(2π fct) − jε sin(2π fct + φ ), (2)
where ε denotes the amplitude mismatch and φ denotes the
phase mismatch of the I and O branches, and fc is the carrier
frequency. Due to the I/Q imbalance, the received signal can
be modeled as [1]
z(n) = µ r(n) + ν r∗ (n), (3)
where
1 + ε e− jφ 1 − ε e jφ
µ= and ν = . (4)
2 2
906
 15th European Signal Processing Conference (EUSIPCO 2007), Poznan, Poland, September 3-7, 2007, copyright by EURASIP

From (3), we see that the ideal baseband signal r(n) is inter- 3. MIMO CHANNEL ESTIMATION
fered by its own complex conjugate due to the I/Q imbalance.
When the I/Q imbalance is vary small, i.e., ε ≈ 1 and φ ≈ 0, 3.1 Optimal Orthogonal Sequences
µ is close to 1 and ν is close to zero. Then the interference We consider MIMO channel estimation using training se-
from the complex conjugate r∗ (n) becomes negligible. quences. Given xi , we want to estimate the channel response
from the received vector rk . For the purpose of channel esti-
2.2 MIMO OFDM Systems mation, we can rewrite (5) as
 
Fig. 1 shows an MIMO OFDM system where the number of hk,0
transmit and receive antennas are Nt and Nr respectively. Let  hk,1 
the channel impulse response from the jth transmit antenna rk = [ X0 X1 · · · XNt −1 ]   ..  + qk ,

to the kth receive antenna be hk, j (n). We assume that the .
lengths of hk, j (n) are ≤ L and the length of cyclic prefix (CP) hk,Nt −1
is L − 1. Let M be the DFT size so that the vectors si , xi and (11)
ri in Fig. 1 are M × 1. In practice, M is usually much larger
than L for the bandwidth efficiency. Due to the assumptions where hk, j is the M × 1 vector defined in (6) and X j is an
on the CP length and channel lengths, the received vector at M × M circulant matrix with the first column x j . Define the
the kth receive antenna (after CP removal) can be written as M × L submatrix A j which consists of the first L columns
of X j and let ck, j = [ hk, j (0) hk, j (1) · · · hk, j (L − 1) ]T .
  Then (11) can be rewritten as
x0
 x1   
rk = [ Hk,0 Hk,1 ··· Hk,Nt −1 ]  ..  + qk , (5) ck,0
 .   ck,1 
xNt −1 rk = [ A0 A1 · · · ANt −1 ]   ..  + qk

.
ck,Nt −1
where Hk, j is an M ×M circulant matrix with the first column
= Ack + qk . (12)
hk, j = [ hk, j (0) hk, j (1) · · · From (12), we see that the channel vector ck is identifiable if
hk, j (L − 1) 0 ··· 0 ]T . (6) and only if the M × LNt matrix A has full column rank. Thus
a necessary condition for the channel identifiability is M ≥
The M × 1 vector qk is the AWGN vector. After the DFT LNt . Assume that qk is a complex Gaussian random vector
operations, one can employ a frequency domain equalizer with covariance matrix Rqk = N0 I. Then, a least squares
(FEQ) to recover the transmitted vector ŝk (see Fig. 1). When estimator of ĉk is given by
there is I/Q imbalance, the received vectors are no longer
given by rk in (5). In the presence of I/Q imbalance, the I/Q ĉk = (A† A)−1 A† rk . (13)
corrupted received vector at the kth receive antenna becomes Define the error vector as ek = ĉk − ck . The design of
[7] optimal sequences that minimize the mean squared error
Nt −1
∑k=0 Ekek k2 is given in [4]. It was shown that the optimal
zk = µk rk + νk r∗k . (7) training sequences from different antennas must satisfy
Using (5), we can write A†k Ai = δ (k − i)I. (14)
Nt −1 Nt −1 That means the training sequences from different transmit
zk = µk ∑ H j x j + νk ∑ H∗j x∗j + µk qk + νk q∗k . (8) antennas must be orthogonal. The general closed-form solu-
j=0 j=0 tions have been derived in [4].

From (8), we find that the interferences consist of not only 3.2 Circularly-Shift Orthogonal Sequences
the vector x j but also its complex conjugate x∗j . Define
In this paper, we propose a special type of orthogonal se-
quences for the estimation of MIMO channels. Due to the
νk space limit, we consider the case where M is a multiple of
αk = . (9)
µk∗ Nt . The general case is given in [10]. The training sequence
sent by the ith transmit antenna is given by
Then if αk is correctly estimated at the receiver, we can com- µµ ¶¶
pensate the I/Q imbalance either in the time domain [2] or in M
xi (n) = x0 n− i , (15)
the frequency domain [1]. It can be verified that Nt M

zk − αk z∗k where x0 (n) is the training sequence sent by the 0th trans-
µ k rk = . (10) mit antenna and its DFT coefficients satisfy |s0 (k)| = √1M for
1 − |αk |2
all k. In other words, the training sequences for all trans-
In Sec. 4, we will discuss how to jointly estimate the chan- mit antennas are obtained by circularly shifting the training
nel coefficients hk, j (n) and the I/Q imbalance factor αk using sequence of the 0th transmit antenna. These circularly-shift
training sequences. sequences satisfy the following property:

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 15th European Signal Processing Conference (EUSIPCO 2007), Poznan, Poland, September 3-7, 2007, copyright by EURASIP

Ant 0 h 0,0(n) Ant 0

s0 x0 r0 s^ 0
Add Remove
IDFT DFT
CP CP
. .
. .
.
. h0,Ntà1(n) hNrà1,0(n) FEQ .
.
sNtà1 xNtà1 Ant Nt à 1 rNrà1 .
AntNr à 1 ^
Add Remove sNtà1
IDFT DFT
CP h Nrà1,Ntà1(n) CP
Figure 1: An MIMO OFDM System

Lemma 1. When the training sequences are chosen as (15), Then we can rewrite the received vector rk at the kth receive
the corresponding matrices Ai satisfy the orthogonality con- antenna in (11) as
dition in (14)  
dk,0
Proof. Let si (k) be the M-point DFT coefficients of xi (n).  dk,1 
We have rk = [ B0 B1 ··· BNt −1 ] 
 ..  + qk ,

.
2π
si (k) = s0 (k)e− j Nt ik , for i = 1, 2, . . . , Nt − 1. (16) dk,Nt −1
(21)
Notice that for all i |si (k)| = √1M because |s0 (k)| = √1M for
where Bi is the M × NMt submatrix consisting of the first NMt
all k. Partition the DFT matrix as W = [ W0 W1 ], where
W0 consists of the first L columns of W. Since Ak is a sub- columns of the M ×M circulant matrix Xi . Define the M ×M
matrix of Xk and the circulant matrix Xk can be diagonalized matrix B = [ B0 · · · BNt −1 ] and the M × 1 vector dk =
by the DFT/IDFT matrices, Ak can be represented as [ dTk,0 · · · dTk,Nt −1 ]T . Then we have

Ak = W† Sk W0 , (17) rk = Bdk + qk . (22)

where Sk is an M × M diagonal matrix with the diagonal en- If the training sequences are chosen as the circularly-shift
tries sk (n). From (16) and (17), the (l, m)th entry of the ma- orthogonal sequences in (15), then we can have the following
trix A†k Ai is given by lemma (a proof is given in [10])

Lemma 2. If xi are the circularly-shift orthogonal sequences

1 M−1 j 2Mπ n( kM iM
Nt − Nt −(m−l)) , in (15), the matrix B is an M × M unitary circulant matrix.
[A†k Ai ]l,m = ∑ e (18)
M n=0
Using Lemma 2, since B is M × M unitary, its inverse is
where −(L − 1) ≤ m − l ≤ (L − 1). Because LNt ≤ M due to B−1 = B† . The the estimate of MIMO channel response can
the conditions of channel identifiability, it can be shown that be obtained by
both (m − l) and L(k − i) − (m − l) are not a multiple of M for
all 0 ≤ k, i ≤ Nt − 1. Using this fact and (18), one can show d̂k = B† rk . (23)
that
As B† is circulant, it can be implemented efficiently using
[A†k Ai ]l,m = δ (k − i)δ (m − l). (19) FFT. Let us partition d̂k as
 
The matrix Ak satisfies (14). d̂k,0
 d̂k,1 
As these sequences satisfy (14), they are optimal. They  
d̂k =  .. , (24)
are named circularly-shift orthogonal sequences because of  . 
the circularly-shift and orthogonal properties. In what fol- d̂k,Nt −1
lows, we will show that using the circularly-shift orthogonal
sequences, the estimate of MIMO channels can be obtained
by multiplication with a circulant matrix. where d̂k, j are NMt × 1 vectors. Then from (20) the estimated
Recall that for the identification of MIMO channels, we channel coefficients ĥk, j (n) are given by the first L entries of
have the condition that M ≥ LNt . Suppose we append ( NMt − d̂k, j . The last ( NMt − L) entries of d̂k, j are nonzero due to the
L) zeros to the L × 1 vector ck,i to obtain the NMt × 1 vector channel noise qk . For a moderate SNR value, these ( NMt − L)
· ¸ entries should be small. In next section, we will show how
ck,i to exploit this fact for jointly estimating the MIMO channels
dk,i = . (20) and I/Q imbalance.
0

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 15th European Signal Processing Conference (EUSIPCO 2007), Poznan, Poland, September 3-7, 2007, copyright by EURASIP

4. JOINT ESTIMATION OF I/Q IMBALANCE AND is AWGN. The transmission and training data are both QPSK
CHANNEL RESPONSE symbols. The training symbols are randomly generated at
each estimation. The size of the DFT matrix is M = 64. To
When there is I/Q imbalance, the received vector at the kth avoid inter-block interference, the CP length is L − 1 = 3.
receive antenna is zk , not rk . The channel coefficients ob-
First we consider the following mean squared errors
tained by B† zk will not be an accurate estimate due to the
(MSE) for the estimation of the channel response and I/Q
I/Q imbalance. Below we will show how to estimate the I/Q
imbalance respectively:
imbalance factor αk and the MIMO channels hk, j (n) from
only one received vector zk . Recall that the vector µk rk can
be represented as (10). Let α̂k be an estimate of αk . Then 1 Nr −1 Nt −1 L−1
from (23) the channel estimator d̂k can be obtained as
MSE(channel) = ∑ ∑ ∑ E|hk, j (l) − ĥk, j (l)|2
Nt Nr L k=0 j=0 l=0
½ ¾
zk − α̂k z∗k νk 2
µk d̂k = B† (µk rk ) = B† . (25) MSE(IQ) = E |αopt − ∗ | . (30)
1 − |α̂k |2 µk
When α̂k ≈ αk , the I/Q imbalance can mostly be compen- Fig. 2 shows the MSEs of the estimation of the channel
sated and (25) will give an accurate estimate of the MIMO response and I/Q imbalance. We consider two cases: (i)
channels. In other words, when α̂k = αk , the last ( NMt − L) Nt = 2, Nr = 1 and (ii) Nt = 4, Nr = 1. Three different mis-
entries of d̂k, j defined in (24) are solely due to noise and any match parameter pairs of I/Q imbalance are considered for
error in the estimation of αk will increase the energy of these both cases: (1) ε = 1, φ = 0, (2) ε = 1.1, φ = 10◦ and (3)
M ε = 1.2, φ = 15◦ . When ε = 1 and φ = 0◦ , there is no I/Q
Nt − L entries. Using this observation, we are able to esti-
mate αk accurately as we will demonstrate below. In many imbalance in the system. From Fig. 2(a), we see that for
applications, |αk |2 is small. Then the channel estimator in all cases, the I/Q imbalance factor αk can be accurately esti-
(25) can be approximated as mated. For a SNR of 30dB, the MSE is 10−5 . Notice that the
accuracy of our method is independent of the values of ε and
µk d̂k ≈ B† (zk − α̂k z∗k ) . (26) φ . The 4 transmit antenna case is only slightly worse than the
2 transmit antenna case. Fig. 2(b) shows the corresponding
Define the (M − Nt L) × M matrix Θ as MSEs of the channel estimation. Again we observe that the
  accuracy is independent of ε and φ . Comparing the cases of
0 I M −L 0 ··· ··· 0 2Tx and 4Tx, it is seen that the 4Tx case is worse than the
Nt
 0 0 0 I M −L 0 ··· 0  2Tx case because we need to estimate 4 channels in the 4Tx
 
Θ= .  Nt
 . (27) case rather than 2 channels in the 2Tx case.
.. .. 
 .. . ··· .  Fig. 3 shows the BER performance of OFDM systems of
0 0 ··· ··· 0 I M −L three cases: (i) Nt = Nr = 1, (ii) Nt = Nr = 2 and (iii) Nt =
Nt
Nr = 4. The mismatch parameters for the three cases are:
M
Multiplying d̂k by Θ will collect all the last ( Nt − L) entries (i) ε0 = 1.1, φ0 = 10◦ , (ii) ε0 = ε1 = 1.1, φ0 = 5◦ , φ1 = 10◦ ,
and (iii) ε0 = ε1 = ε2 = ε3 = 1.1, φ0 = 2.5◦ , φ1 = 5◦ , φ2 =
of d̂k,i . From (26), we have 7.5◦ , φ3 = 10◦ . Zero-forcing FEQs are used at the receiver.
For the purpose of symbol recovery, the number of antennas
Θd̂k ≈ ΘB† (zk − α̂k z∗k ). (28) should satisfy Nr ≥ Nt and in our simulation, we let Nr = Nt .
The BER performance of the systems with I/Q imbalance is
We want to find αk such that kΘd̂k k2 is minimized. From also given in the figure. It can be found that the performance
the theory of linear algebra, it is known that the optimal αk is seriously degraded and the BER suffers an error flooring.
is given by In the same figure, we also show the BER performance of
† ∗ †
(ΘB zk ) (ΘB zk ) † the ideal case where the receiver knows the exact value of
αk,opt = ∗ ∗ . (29) channel coefficients and αk . From the figure, we see that for
(ΘB† zk )† (ΘB† zk ) all cases, the BER performance of the proposed method is
Once αk,opt is obtained, one can get the estimate of MIMO very close to the ideal case. Note that the 4Tx-4Rx case is
worse than the 2Tx-2Rx case and 1Tx-1Rx case because of
channels, µk d̂k , using (25). For the compensation of I/Q im- higher data rate.
balance, one can employ (10) to obtain µk rk . Notice that
there is no need to compensate the factor µk because the fac-
6. CONCLUSION
tor µk in (µk rk ) will be canceled when we use (µk d̂k ) to im-
plement the FEQ. In this paper, we proposed a method for jointly estimating
the I/Q imbalance and channel response for MIMO OFDM
5. SIMULATION RESULTS systems. The proposed method can accurately estimate both
the I/Q imbalance and channel response. The implementa-
In this section, we carry out Monte-Carlo experiments to ver-
tion complexity of this method is very low. Moreover, the
ify the performance of the proposed method. A total of 5000
proposed method can be extended for jointly estimating the
random channels for each transmit and receive antenna pair
carrier frequency offset, I/Q imbalance and channel response
are generated in the simulation process. Each transmit and
[10].
receive channel pair are i.i.d. complex Gaussian random vari-
ables with 4 taps, and the variance of channel taps is normal-
ized by ∑L−1 2
l=0 E{|hk, j (l)| } = 1 for all k, j. The channel noise REFERENCES

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 15th European Signal Processing Conference (EUSIPCO 2007), Poznan, Poland, September 3-7, 2007, copyright by EURASIP

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