Iterative channel estimation and decoding for convolutionally coded anti-jam FH signals

An iterative algorithm for joint decoding and channel estimation in frequency-hopping (FH) networks is proposed. In the proposed algorithm, soft decoder outputs are used in the iterative estimation of the time-varying variance of the additive interference resulting from the sum of the thermal noise, partial-band noise jamming, and other-user interference. The soft outputs are also used in the estimation of the independent random carrier phases and multiplicative Rayleigh fading coefficients in different frequency dwells. The estimation process is further enhanced through the insertion of known symbols in the transmitted data stream. The proposed iterative symbol-aided demodulation scheme is compared with the coherent scenario, where the channel state information is assumed to be known a priori at the receiver, for both convolutionally coded and turbo coded FH systems. The proposed iterative channel estimation approach is suited for slow FH systems where the channel dynamics are much slower than the hopping rate. This observation motivates the consideration of another robust approach for generating the log-likelihood ratios for fast hopping systems in additive white Gaussian noise channels. Simulation results that demonstrate the excellent performance of the proposed algorithms in various scenarios are also presented.