Blind estimation of multipath channel parameters: a modal analysis approach

We propose a novel approach to efficiently estimate multipath channel parameters, which is particularly useful in sparse multipath channels. Conventional methods do not fully exploit the inherent structure present in the combined channel response; the excess number of parameters to be estimated by conventional methods makes the identification difficult. By utilizing a priori knowledge of the transmission data pulse, the channel identification problem is transformed into the mode estimation problem. Then, the parameters directly related to the multipath propagation are extracted in the the modal analysis framework, and hence, the number of estimation parameters are significantly reduced. Finally, the multipath channel parameters are obtained by inverse-transforming the mode parameters. Simulation results show significant improvement in the normalized mean square error over existing approaches.