Multipath fading compensation techniques using pilot and data symbols in mobile radio channels

It is envisaged that personal communications services (PCS) will become an important part of the future telecommunication services. The paper studies techniques for transmitting a 16-ary quadrature-amplitude modulated (16QAM) signal in different mobile radio environments, Conventional multipath fading compensation techniques using only the pilot symbols, incorporated with zeroth-order and first-order prediction methods, are studied. Novel techniques making use both the pilot symbols and the data symbols, together with the improved zeroth-order and first-order prediction methods, are proposed. A series of intensive Monte Carlo simulations has been carried out on these techniques and the results have shown that, at high signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs), the bit-error rate (BER) performance can be reduced by a factor of about 46 and 2 using the improved zeroth-order and first-order prediction respectively, relative to those obtained using the pilot symbols only.