Studies on the Performance and Impact of Channel Estimation in MIMO and OFDM Systems

• Main Author: Larsen, Michael David
• Format: Others
• Published: BYU ScholarsArchive 2009
• Subjects: OFDM; MIMO; MIMO-OFDM; channel estimation; channel prediction; channel state information; performance bounds; perturbation theory; Electrical and Computer Engineering
• Online Access: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/1951; https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2950&context=etd

The need for reliable, high-throughput, mobile wireless communication technologies has never been greater as increases in the demand for on-the-go access to information, entertainment, and other electronic services continues. Two such technologies, which are at the forefront of current research efforts, are orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) and multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems, their union being known simply as MIMO-OFDM. The successful performance of these technologies depends upon the availability of accurate information concerning the wireless communication channel. In this dissertation, several issues related to quality of this channel state information (CSI) are studied. Specifically, the first part of this dissertation considers the design of optimal pilot signals for OFDM systems. The optimization is addressed via lower bounds on the estimation error variance, which bounds are given by formulations of the Cram'{e}r-Rao bound (CRB). The second part of this dissertation uses the CRB once again, this time as a tool for evaluating the potential performance of MIMO-OFDM channel estimation and prediction. Bounds are found for several parametric time-varying wideband MIMO-OFDM channel models, and numerical evaluations of these bounds are used to illuminate several interesting features regarding the estimation and prediction of MIMO-OFDM channels. The final part of this dissertation considers the problem of MIMO multiplexing using SVD-based methods when only imperfect CSI is available. For this purpose, general per-MIMO-subchannel signal and interference-plus-noise power expressions are derived to quantify the effects of CSI imperfections, and these expressions are then used to find robust MIMO-SVD power and bit allocations which maintain good overall performance in spite of imperfect CSI.