Enhanced MMSE channel estimation using timing error statistics for wireless OFDM systems

Estimation and tracking of the frequency-selective time-varying channel response is a challenging task for wireless communication systems incorporating coherent OFDM. In pilot-symbol-assisted (PSA) OFDM systems, the minimum mean-square-error (MMSE) estimator provides the optimum performance based on the channel statistics (channel correlation function and SNR). In OFDM systems, FFT-block timing error introduces a linear phase rotation to data modulated on individual subcarriers. An MMSE channel estimator designed only using the wireless channel statistics performs only sub-optimally when subcarrier phase rotations due to block timing errors are present. In this paper, we show that by using the block timing error statistics of the OFDM time-synchronizer the performance of the MMSE channel estimation can be significantly improved. Numerical results show that the bit-error-probability (BEP) performance degradation due to timing errors can be almost completely recovered by the proposed technique.