Joint Channel Estimation and Symbol Detection for Orthogonal Space-Time Block-Coding Systems in Frequency-Selective Channels

Orthogonal space-time block coding (OSTBC) in multiple-antenna wireless systems has recently emerged as one of the most promising reliability-enhancing technologies for high-speed, high-quality data services. In this paper, we propose a technique to achieve joint channel estimation and symbol detection for OSTBC in frequency-selective fading channels. The key observation is that a multiple-input–single-output system, which is using OSTBC, can be transformed into an equivalent single-input–multiple-output system using the implicit redundancy in OSTBC. This allows a probabilistic method, known as the Baum–Welch algorithm, to be applied at each output branch. As each output branch is a function of the same input, redundant information may be exchanged between the multiple branches to improve detection performance. The proposed technique does not require multiple antennas at the receiver and only has moderate computational complexity. Furthermore, the Cramer–Rao lower bound (CRB) is also developed to facilitate performance analysis. Simulation results are provided to demonstrate the performance of the proposed algorithm.