Fast Channel Estimation for Massive Machine Type Communications1

For massive machine type communications (mMTC), it is critical to squeeze the transmission overhead as packet length is usually short and power is limited. Reducing preamble/pilot length for channel estimation is thus very important. In this paper, we propose to use short preamble for channel estimation in generalized frequency division multiplexing (GFDM) communication. Based on the short preamble, we can estimate a short channel first. We then show that the conventional zero-padding method for extending short channel to long channel in GFDM is not accurate. A new efficient method to construct the long effective channel from the obtained short channel is proposed. The proposed new method can construct a long channel for GFDM equalization without knowing the time sync error. It is proved theoretically that the constructed channel is correct given that the length of cyclic prefix (CP) and cyclic suffix (CS) are longer than the original channel length plus the time sync error. Simulations at various situations are shown to verify the results.