Low Complexity Channel Estimation for 3GPP LTE

Downlink MIMO OFDM Systems

Omer C etin

, Bahattin Karakaya

and Hakan Ali C rpan

Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering,

Istanbul University, Avclar Campus, 34320,

Istanbul, Turkey
Email: omercetin@[Link], bahattin@[Link]

Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering,

Istanbul Technical University,

IT

U Maslak Campus, 34469,

Istanbul, Turkey
Email: cirpanh@[Link]
AbstractMultiple Input Multiple Output - Orthogonal Fre-
quency Division Multiplexing (MIMO-OFDM) is a promising
technique for reaching high data rates targeted in the 3rd
Generation Partnership Project - Long Term Evolution (3GPP-
LTE). MIMO-OFDM channel estimation schemes play a very
important role on achieving this aim. However, the complexity
of the estimators increases exponentially due to the structure of
the MIMO systems. This causes an increase in the computational
burden of the transceivers. As a result, the complexity of the
channel estimators is becoming an important issue in real world
MIMO-OFDM applications. In this paper, the performance of the
low complexity Minimum Mean Square Error (MMSE) channel
estimator scheme based on Karhunen-Lo eve (KL) series expan-
sion coefcients for the 3GPP-LTE Downlink MIMO-OFDM
systems is examined. System level simulations are accomplished
to compare the performances of the estimators under the spatially
correlated channel coefcient variations.
Index Terms3GPP, LTE, MIMO, OFDM, MMSE, Karhunen-
Lo eve.
I. INTRODUCTION
OFDM is a high performance candidate for wireless com-
munication systems owing to its many advantages, especially
its performance in frequency-selective fading channels. Besides
that, MIMO transceiver architecture has potential to improve
the system capacity. Hence in 3GPP-LTE, combined MIMO-
OFDM structure is anticipated to meet the demands of rapidly
increasing number of applications on wireless mobile networks.
In MIMO-OFDM systems channel state information is essential
for the detection and equalization. In [1], 3GPP-LTE physical
channels are described in detailed and modulation types are
standardized. Besides that spatial channel models for MIMO
simulations are described elaborately in [2]. In the time domain
pilot-aided channel estimation, unoccupied subcarriers namely
guard bands, adversely affect the performance of the estimator
[3]. In order to reduce the complexity of the estimators, MMSE
estimation of the KL series expansion coefcients is examined in
[4][6]. In this paper, we compare the performances of the MMSE
estimations of the KL series expansion coefcients of the 3GPP-
LTE MIMO channel. In the simulations, the performances of the
MMSE estimator of the KL expansion and LS estimator under
the different channel correlations are compared. The notation
used in this paper is as follows:
II. SIGNAL MODEL
The block diagram of the simplied 3GPP-LTE, MIMO-
OFDM transmitter system with NT transmit antennas is depicted
A
T
Transpose of A.
A
H
Conjugate transpose of A.
diag(a) Diagonal matrix of a.
I
N
N N identity matrix.
0
N
N 1 column vector with all zeros.
E[. ] The expectation operator.
R
N
N dimensional space with real numbers.
C
N
N dimensional space with complex numbers.
Kronecker product.
in Figure 1. M-QAM modulated serial data stream is grouped
into N
d
sized blocks.
M
o
d
u
l
a
t
i
o
n
A,n A,n
A,n
A,n A,n
A,n
A,n

s
(1)
x
(1)

X
(1)

s x

X
N
T
( )
N
T
( ) N
T
( )
A
(1)
A,n
A
N
T
( )
Fig. 1. MIMO-OFDM Transmitter scheme for LTE Downlink
A number of modulated Nrs reference signals, namely pilots
and N
d
sized data signals are allocated to the resource elements as
dened in [1]. Reference and data signals have been paralleled
into consecutive data blocks in order to constitute an OFDM
symbol. At the pth transmit antenna, the th OFDM symbol can
be represented as
A
(p)

= [A
(p)

[0], A
(p)

[1], . . . , A
(p)

[NBW 1]]
T

N
BW
(1)
where denotes the modulation alphabet and NBW = N
d
+Nrs
is the number of the occupied subcarriers at each of the transmit
antenna. Before the N-point Inverse Fast Fourier Transform
(IFFT) block, in order to avoid interference, NGB zeros are
978-1-4577-9538-2/11/$26.00 2011 IEEE 1441
padded to the unused subcarriers at the edges of the spectrum
as guard bands, where NGB is equal to N NBW. Only the
specied OFDM symbols contain the reference signal for the
channel estimation. Considering only the reference signal inserted
OFDM symbols in the data-aided channel estimation, the OFDM
symbol indicator could be omitted for the sake of simplicity.
Reference and data signals with guard band before the IFFT
block can be represented by X
(p)

N
as below
X
(p)
= [0, A
(p)
left
T
, 0
T
N
FFT
N
BW
, A
(p)
right
T
]
T
(2)
where
A
(p)
left
T
= [A
(p)
[
NBW
2
], . . . , A
(p)
[NBW 1]]
T
A
(p)
right
T
= [A
(p)
[0], A
(p)
[1], . . . , A
(p)
[
NBW
2
1]]
T
. (3)
N-point IFFT block is drived by the OFDM symbol X
(p)
to
generate time domain transmitted signal x
(p)
is found to be
x
(p)
= FX
(p)
(4)
where
F =

1 1 . . . 1
1 e
j2/N
. . . e
j2(N1)/N
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
1 e
j2(N1)/N
. . . e
j2(N1)(N1)/N

(5)
is the DFT matrix. In order to get rid of the inter-symbol
interference, Cyclic Prex (CP) with a size of NCP L is added
to the signal x
(p)
to obtain the time domain transmitted signal
s
(p)
C
N+N
CP
. L represents the channel impulse response
(CIR) vector length of the MIMO channel between the pth
transmit antenna and the qth receive antenna where it can be
expressed as h
(qp)
=
[
h
(qp)
[0], h
(qp)
[1], , h
(qp)
[L 1]
]
C
L
.
In Figure 2, MIMO-OFDM receiver scheme with NR anten-
nas is depicted. At each receive antenna, the signal r
(q)

C
N+N
CP
+L1
can be expressed as the sum of the convolved
signals s
(p)
and h
(qp)
from the transmit antennas. Before the
FFT block at each receiver, unnecessary terms are removed and
the signal combined into the subsequent blocks with a length of N
termed as y
(q)
. In the light of above time domain expressions, the
frequency domain representation of the received signal at the qth
antenna Y
(q)
= [Y
(q)
[0], Y
(q)
[1], ..., Y
(q)
[N 1]]
T
C
N
can be
expressed as
Y
(q)
= XH
(q)
+Wn (6)
where Wn C
N
, is the additive white gaussian noise (AWGN)
at the qth receive antenna with zero mean and covariance matrix
CWn
= E[WnWn
H
] =
2
IN. X is the transmitted signal
from all of the antennas in the frequency domain and can be
represented as below
X = [X
(1)
diag
, X
(2)
diag
, ..., X
(N
T
)
diag
]
NN
T
N
, (7)
where X
(p)
diag
= diag{X
(p)
}
NN
and p 1, 2, ..., NT . H
(q)

C
N
T
N
is the combined channel frequency response (CFR) from
all of the transmit antennas to the qth receive antenna, expressed
by
H
(q)
=
[
H
(q1)
T
, H
(q2)
T
, ..., H
(qN
T
)
T
]
T
. (8)
H
(qp)
C
N
s are the CFR between the pth transmit antenna
and the qth receive antenna and can be obtained as below
H
(qp)
= FLh
(qp)
, (9)
where FL C
NL
can be constituted by taking the rst L
columns of the N-point DFT matrix F in (5). From (8) and
(9) entire MIMO channel frequency response H C
M
, where
M NT NRN, can be expressed as below
H =
[
H
(1)
T
, H
(2)
T
, ..., H
(N
R
)
T
]
T
. (10)
In the above expression, it is assumed that the whole CFR is
spatially uncorrelated. In order to drive an expression of the
spatially correlated channel frequency response, HS C
M
in
terms of H; we have to dene the spatial correlation matrix
R C
N
R
N
T
N
R
N
T
as below [7]
R = RTX RRX . (11)
Above, RTX C
N
T
N
T
and RRX C
N
R
N
R
are the
normalized spatial correlation matrices of the transmit and the
receive antennas respectively. From (10) and (11) the spatially
correlated channel frequency response can be denoted as
HS =

RH . (12)
y
Y
r

N
R
( )
(1)
Y
A,n
Y
A,n
( )
N
R
( ) N
R
( )
N
R
( )
~
A,n
A,n
(1)
A,n
(1)
A,n
(1)
A,n
y
A,n
CP
SP
iemoval
CP
SP
iemoval
r
E
q
u
a
l
i
z
a
t
i
o
n

B
e
t
e
c
t
i
o
n
R
e
f
e
i
e
n
c
e

S
i
g
n
a
l
E
x
t
i
a
c
t
i
o
n
Y
R
e
f
e
i
e
n
c
e

S
i
g
n
a
l
E
x
t
i
a
c
t
i
o
n
C
h
a
n
n
e
l
E
s
t
i
m
a
t
i
o
n
~
Fig. 2. MIMO-OFDM Receiver scheme for LTE Downlink
Denoting
Y = [Y
T
1
, Y
T
2
, ..., Y
T
N
R
]
T
(13)
as the entire received signal vector Y C
N
R
N
the whole signal
model can be written as in [5]:
Y = (IN
R
X)HS +W . (14)
where W C
N
R
N
is the zero mean white gaussian noise with
a covariance matrix of CW = E[WW
H
] =
2
IN
R
N.
III. CHANNEL ESTIMATION
In this section, LS channel estimation and MMSE estimation
of the Karhunen-Lo eve expansion coefcients will be derived.
Assume that only the symbols which contain the reference signal
are selected. In the frequency domain signal representation, there
exist Nrs reference signals. Denoting

Y = (IN
R


X)

HS +

W , (15)
as the received signal vector at the reference signal positions
where

Y C
Np
and Np = NT NRNrs is the total number
of reference signal in the MIMO scheme. In (15)

X can be
expressed as

X = [

X
(1)
,

X
(2)
, ...,

X
(N
T
)
]
N
T
KpN
T
Kp
1442
D D D D D D
D D D D D D
D D D D D D
D D D D D D
D D D D D D
D D D D D D
D D D D D D
D D D D D D
D D D D D D
D D D D D D
D D D D D D
D D D D D D
R1
R1
0
0
0
0 R1
R1
A=0 A=5
D D D D D D
D D D D D D
D D D D D D
D D D D D D
D D D D D D
D D D D D D
D D D D D D
D D D D D D
D D D D D D
D D D D D D
D D D D D D
D D D D D D
0
0
0
0 R0
R0
R0
R0
TX1 TX2
A=0 A=5
F
r
e
q
u
e
n
c
y
Time
Resource Block Resource Block
k=0
k=11
0
D
R
Reference
Symbol
Null
Symbol
Data
Symbol
F
r
e
q
u
e
n
c
y
Time
k=0
k=11
Fig. 3. 3GPP-LTE MIMO scheme downlink signal pattern
A. Least Squares Estimator
The LS estimator of the reference signals can be derived as

HS = (
H
)
1

Y , (16)
where C
NpNp
can be obtained as = IN
R


X. In
LTE MIMO structure, the reference signals are orthogonal to
each other. In Figure 3. a simple reference signal orthogonality
is depicted. Thus (
H
)
1
in (16) can be easily derived as in
[6] below

HS =
H

Y . (17)
B. Karhunen-Lo eve Expansion
The frequency response of the MIMO channel at reference
signal locations

HS, is a zero-mean random variable with covari-
ance matrix CH. KL transformation makes the channel vector
orthogonal such that it can be represented by KL coefcients
basis vectors as below

HS =
Np

l=1
g
l

l
= g , (18)
where is are orthonormal basis vectors constitute =
[
1, 2, , Np
]
and g
l
s are the KL expansion coefcients
dened in vector g =
[
g1, g2, , gNp
]
T
. Consequently dening
E[gg
H
] = g; the channel covariance matrix at reference signal
positions can be easily expressed as
CH = E[

HS(

HS)
H
] (19)
= g
H
. (20)
In the above equation, if the g matrix is diagonal, g
H
expression becomes the Singular Value Decomposition of the CH
matrix. Thus we can express (15) in a different form

Y = g +

W . (21)
Finally, the MMSE estimator of the KL expansion coefcients
can be expressed as in [5]
g = g
(
g +
2
INp
)
1

Y
=
H

Y . (22)
can be denoted as
= g
(
g +
2
INp
)
1
= diag{
g
1
g
1
+
2
, . . . ,
g
Np
g
Np
+
2
} , (23)
where g
1
, g
2
, , g
Np
s as the singular values of the g.
Assuming the rank of the matrix g as , the MMSE estimator
of the optimum truncated KL expansion can be dened as
tr = diag{
g
1
g
1
+
2
, . . . ,
gr
gr
+
2
, 0, . . . , 0} . (24)
As a result, the MMSE estimator of the KL expansion coefcient
requires only the division operations of the coefcients instead
of huge matrix multiplications.
IV. SIMULATION
Full channel impulse response is extracted from the one-
dimensional linear interpolation of the reference signal at the
pilot points. In [2], LTE MIMO Channel parameters are dened
for the simulations. In Table I. LTE downlink air interface
specications are dened for different bandwidths. A Bandwidth
of 3 MHz is chosen in the simulations. This choice means that
working with a number of N
DL
RB
= 15 resource blocks. From I,
DFT size and the number of occupied subcarriers are dened as
N = 256, NBW = 180 respectively. It is obvious that the total
number of the guard bands is parameterized as NGB = 76.
Modulation type chosen as BPSK. In order to generate the
reference signal, L-31 Gold Sequence Pseudo Random Number
array is used as depicted in [1]. 2x2 MIMO channel type is
chosen. Equalization is performed by LS estimated and interpo-
lated reference signals. A number of r coefcient is computed
by the optimum truncated KL expansion coefcient estimator.
Reduced rank truncated KL estimator nds r1 coefcients. The
transmit and receive antennas correlation coefcients are dened
as = 0.3 and = 0.3 respectively. The transmit antenna
correlation matrix RTX and the receive antenna correlation
matrix RRX are dened as
RTX =
[
1
1
]
RRX =
[
1
1
]
In Figure 4; the performances of the LS estimator, optimal rank
and reduced rank truncated KL expansion MMSE estimators
are compared in Bit Error Rate (BER) sense. There exists an
error oor for the reduced rank KL MMSE estimator greater
than the values of a 20 dB Eb/N0. In Figure 5; BER results are
examined according to different correlation coefcients for the
same LTE spatial channel model [7].
V. CONCLUSION
The KL expansion MMSE estimator exhibits a better perfor-
mance than the LS estimator in the view of BER criteria. Reduced
rank truncated KL expansion coefcient estimator performance
is also better than the LS at low Eb/N0 values. However at
high Eb/N0 values LS estimator exhibits a higher performance
than the truncated KL expansion estimator. In addition to
increased performance, KL expansion MMSE estimator is also a
computationally efcient structure for the LTE downlink MIMO-
OFDM systems.
VI. ACKNOWLEGMENT
This work is supported by The Scientic and Technological Re-
search Council of Turkey (TUBITAK) under grant no. 108E054.
1443
Channel Bandwidth 1.4 MHz 3 MHz 5 MHz 10 MHz 15 MHz 20 MHz
Number of Resource Blocks N
RB
6 15 25 50 75 100
Number of used subcarriers 72 180 300 600 900 1200
DFT Size 128 256 512 1024 1536 2048
TABLE I
3GPP-LTE RESOURCE CONFIGURATION [1]
5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40
10
4
10
3
10
2
10
1
10
0
Eb / No [dB]
B
E
R


LS estimated Channel
MMSE estimation of KL coefficients
MMSE estimation of truncated KL coefficients
Perfect Channel knowledge
Fig. 4. BER results for estimated and Perfect channel state informations
5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40
10
4
10
3
10
2
10
1
10
0
Eb / No [dB]
B
E
R


= = 0.9
= = 0.7
= = 0.5
= = 0.4
= = 0.3
Fig. 5. BER curves for the LTE 2x2 MIMO-OFDM system with different
correlation coefcients
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(E-UTRA); Physical Channels and Modulation (Release 9), Technical
report, 3GPP, December 2009 , 2009.
[2] 3GPP TR 25.996 V9.0.0 Spatial Channel Model for Multiple Input
Multiple Output (MIMO) simulations (Release 9), Technical report,
3GPP, December 2009, 2009.
[3] Seongwook Song and A. Singer, Pilot-Aided OFDM Channel Esti-
mation in the Presence of the Guard Band, Communications, IEEE
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[7] Correlation-Based Spatial Channel Modeling, [Online]. Available:
[Link]
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