OFDM channel estimation with timing offset for

satellite plus terrestrial multipath channels

Yeon-Su Kang, Do-Seob Ahn, Ho-Jin Lee
Digital Broadcasting Research Division
Electronics Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI), Daejeon, Korea
{yskang} @etri.re.kr

Abstract- In this paper, we propose a discrete Fourier trans- channel impulse response is incorrect [2]. For example, MSE
form (DFT)-based channel estimation and timing synchronization floor will occur really under the IMR channel (large delay)
to cope with satellite plus intermediate module repeater (IMR) with assumption on satellite channel (small delay).
channels. Conventional DFT-based channel estimations suffer
from the timing offset and incorrect channel impulse response, Timing synchronization for OFDM system means finding
and this results in means square error (MSE) floor of channel timing instant for fast Fourier transform (FFT) process among
estimations. Moreover, timing synchronization accuracy is also received sampled sequences. Conventional timing synchro-
degraded on IMR channels. We, therefor, propose an improved nization algorithms have sufficient performance on satellite
DFT-based channel estimation by deciding significant channel channels which have very small rms delay. On the contrary,
taps based on a threshold and we derive this threshold with
respect to MSE. Using results from proposed channel estimation, the accuracy is very degraded on large delayed channel like
we compensate residual timing offset of conventional timing IMR channels and they have residual timing offset.
estimation. In this paper, we propose a modified DFT-based channel
estimation in order to cope with the MSE floor and compensate
I. INTRODUCTION residual timing offset of conventional timing synchronization
Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is the by using results form proposed channel estimation. In pro-
most popular promise for the Beyond 3G (B3G) systems for posed channel estimation, to include all informative channel
its advantages in high-bit-rate transmission over dispersive taps without prior channel information, we detect significant
channels. In the B3G systems, the major role of satellites will channel taps with respect to a threshold. The threshold is de-
be providing terrestrial fill-in service and efficient multicas- termined in order to reduce the MSE of the channel estimation
ting/broadcasting services. As the terrestrial fill-in services, and relates to time domain noise power.
satellite systems provide services and applications similar to The next section describes the basic system model and
those of terrestrial systems outside the terrestrial coverage areaintroduces some earlier estimation algorithms. In Section III,
as much as possible. In this regard, in order to enhance the we propose a new channel estimation algorithm. Section IV
coverage given by satellite layer in urban and sub-urban, intro- presents simulation results and discussions, and Section V
ducing intermediate module repeaters (IMR) is considered as offers some conclusions.
a solution. However, in present IMR environments, multipath II. SYSTEM DESCRIPTION
propagation similar to that experienced in the terrestrial chan-
nels. Usually, under terrestrial channels, channel estimation A. OFDM system
and timing synchronization are degraded by multipath effect We consider an OFDM system that has N subcarriers
comparing with satellite channels having line of sight and and each subcarrier consists of data symbol X[k], where k
small delay. represents the subcarreir index. The OFDM transmitter uses
Based on these technological issues, we propose an efficient an inverse discrete Fourier transform (IDFT) of size N for
OFDM channel estimation and synchronization algorithm to modulation. Then the transmitted OFDM signal in discrete-
cope with both IMR and satellite channels. For channel esti- time domain can be expressed as
mation in this paper, we especially consider discrete Fourier
transform (DFT)-based estimation [1]-[4]. This channel es-
timation uses time domain properties of channels. Since a
={NL,X[k]
x[n]
k=o
exp (J27 N ) 0< n< N-1 (1)

channel impulse response (CIR), without losses of generality, where n is the time domain sample index of an OFDM signal.
is not longer than the guard interval in OFDM systems, this In order to avoid inter-symbol interference (ISI) caused by
estimation is modified in [1] by limiting the number of channel multipath environments and inter-carrier interference (ICI), a
taps in time domain and suppressing noise outside of CIR. cyclic prefix (CP) is appended to the OFDM symbol. After
However, because the improvement is based on assumption passing through a multipath channel and removing CP, one re-
that channel impulse response or its delay length is known at ceived discrete time domain OFDM signal y[n] is represented
the receiver, these methods can make mean square error (MSE) by
floor by the energy loss in the excluded channel taps when the y[n] = x[n] x h[n] + w[n], 0 < n < N-1 (2)

0-7803-9392-9/06/$20.00 (c) 2006 IEEE

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 Frequency dom n Time domain Frequency domain
where x denotes cyclic convolution operation, w [n] is inde- ,_- ,_

pendent and identically distributed additive white Gaussian HT., (°) hL (0) h1 (0) Hi (0)
noise (AWGN) sample in time domain with zero mean and
-

HLS (1)

variance uwt2 = E [ w[n] 2] and h[n] is the discrete time

channel impulse response given by LS h (L-1) h1 (L -1)
Channel N-point . Npoint
IDFT DFT
estimation
L-1 O
h[n] = Z a13[n -1], (3) O
1=0
H (N -1) H (N - 1)

where ali represents a different path complex gain, I is the

index of the different path delay that is based on sampling Fig 1. The block diagram of the conventional DFT-based channel estimation
[1]
time interval, which means there is no channel power loss
caused by sampling time miss-match [3], and L is the length of
the channel impulse response. For simplicity, time dependence C. DFT-based channel estimation with timing offset
nature of the channel impulse response is suppressed in the DFT-based channel estimation exploits the typical property
notation. At the receiver, we assume that the guard interval of OFDM systems having the symbol period much longer than
is longer than the maximum channel delay and the frequency the duration of the channel impulse response. Because the
synchronization is perfect. Then, the k-th subcarrier output in estimated channel impulse response from least square (LS)
frequency domain can be represented by has most of its power concentrated on a few first samples [1],
DFT-based estimation reduces the noise power that exists only
Y[k] = X[k]H[k]eJ2w N + W[k], 0 < k < N -1 (4) outside of the CIR part [2]. The basic block diagram of DFT-
based estimation is shown in Fig.l. For simplicity, we assume
where W[k] is AWGN sample in frequency domain with zero timing synchronization is perfect. The n-th estimated sample
mean and variance 72 = N72 t [5], 0 indicates normalized of channel impulse response can be expressed with the LS
timing offset, and H[k] is the channel frequency response estimation, then we have
given by:
hLs [n] IDFTN{HLs[k]}, O<n<N-1
h[n] + w[n] (7)
H[k]=EZa1=0
exp (-J2w ) O < k < N -1 (5)
where IDFTN } indicates N-point inverse discrete
Fourier transform, HLS [n] = Y [k] IX [k], and
B. Timing synchronization and its problem w[n] = IDFTN{W[k]IX[k]}. The channel impulse
One approach of the timing synchronization uses the sliding response is typically limited to the length of channel impulse
correlation as described; response L which is less than the guard interval. In (7), the
channel impulse response can be described as:
2
N-1
A = arg max , y [n IH]p
+ [1] (6)(6) h[n] = { IDFTN{fH[k]}
~0,
0<n<L 1
L< n< N 1 (8)
1=0
By using (7), (8) can be divided into two parts; CIR part and
where p[l] is a known reference training symbol. In practice, noise only existing part, then we have:
synchronization algorithms, including (6), have some timing
offset on multipath channels with respect to rms delay of hLs[n] = h[n]i-vw[n]
+w[n] if 0 < n < L-1
otherwise (9)
channel. Therefore, although synchronization is satisfactory on
satellite channels, timing offset on IMR channels can cause As shown in (8), all information of channels is contained in the
performance degradation. Mostofi analysis this degradation first L samples and other samples are just noise. Hence taking
caused by timing offset [6]. In this paper, authors show that the only the first L samples and ignoring noise-only samples, we
late symbol timing (i.e., m > 0) cause both a significant ISI can achieve a better performance. Expressing these processes
created by the samples from the next symbol and ICI by loss in equations, we get:
of othogonality. In contrary, timing error for the early symbol 1
timing (i.e., m < 0) case result in lower interference than hDFT[n] = '1h[n] 0+ w[n] if 0 otherwise
<n<L (10)
late symbol timing (or no interference) due to the presence of
CP. As a result, a simple method to avoid these degradation is From (10), DFT-based channel estimation is denoted as:
shifting the mean value of synchronizaton inside CP region by HDFT[k]=DFTN hDFT[n]}, O<k<N-1 (1 1)
adding preset margin A to estimated point A, where A must
be greater than the maximum timing offset caused by (6). But To illustrate the performance of DFT-based channel estimation,
this method has a drawback reducing multipath tolerance. we consider the individual MSE of each subcarriers. In [2], if
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we assume channel has sample-spaced impluse response, the
individual MSE of DFT-based channel estimation is given as
L 3
MSEDFT [k] N SNR
where SNR= E[ X[k] 21] /f is the average signal to noise
ratio (SNR) and F[
E fX[k] 2] E [lX[k] -2] is a constant
depending on the signal constellation. Usually, L is unknown
variable depending on channel environments, and (12) repre-
sents small channel length has small MSE. To express different
two satellite channel environments, we define two parameters
of the channels
. LSAT is the length of the satellite channel impulse
response
. LIMR is the length of a IMR channel impulse response
Especially, satellite channels are characterized as small chan-
nel length and IMR channels are characterized as large channel
length. Therefore, DFT-based channel estimation ideally has
better performance on satellite channels than IMR channels.
However, if we set L as LSAT on IMR channels, MSE will
increase significantly by missing the energy in the excluded
channel taps [1], and moreover the length of channels are not
known at the receiver. As a result, we must set L as LjMR to
prevent MSE floor regardless of system channel environments.
However, in this case, the MSE of conventional DFT-based
estimation is fixed as Lim,R even though we can get much
better performance on satellite channels.
In addition to this property, timing offset also affect the
performance of DFT-based channel estimation. In brief, timing
offset circularly shift CIR in (7) [6]. In case of using method
in subsection B, timing offset always occur at left hand side of
exact timing point in received data sequence. this offset shifts
CIR in (7) to right hand side as shown in Fig 2. As a result, in
order to prevent MSE floor caused by missing channel taps,
L in (12) must be set as LjMR + A. Consequently, the MSE
of DFT-based channel estimation is degraded as follow:
MSEDFT [k] LjMR +A 13 (13)
N SNR
On the contrary, if we can adaptively choose L both satellite
channels and IMR channels, we could expect the better per-
formance on both channels environments. Hence, we propose
an improved estimation algorithm in the next section based on
this idea.
III. PROPOSED CHANNEL ESTIMATION
In this section, we propose an efficient joint channel es-
timation and timing synchronization algorithm for satellite
OFDM systems. In the proposed algorithm, we introduce
a new significant channel tap estimation (SCTE) to detect
significant and effective channel taps. we also refine the
timing synchronization by using the result of SCTE block.
The detail procedure of proposed algorithm are described by
the following steps with Fig.2:
1) Estimate the initial timing instants T using (6).
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2) To prevent ISI and ICI, subtract preset margin A (as
mentioned in subsection b) from initial timing instant;
T -A.
3) Do FFT with timing instant T- A and estimate the
channel impulse response from LS estimation through
(7)
4) In order to determine effective channel taps, we detect
significant channel taps as below decision rule:
hscTE[nl= {hLS [n] if hLs [n] > A (14)
0 otherwise
where A is the threshold deciding the significant channel
taps. Since LIMR + A is the largest channel length
with timing offset, we consider significant channel tap
decisions just in the region 0 < n < LjMR + A -1.
5) To estimate residual timing offset 7, find the first non
zero sample from the result of (14) with threshold A,.
6) The final estimated timing instant is T- A + a
7) Compensate (14) for residual timing offset a
hprop [n] { (7 LJMR+u1
<n<
(15)
O
L,MR+±< n < N +o- I
The final channel frequency response of proposed esti-
mation is
Hprop[k] = DFTN {hprop[}n], 7 <n< N+- 1.
(16)
The core of the proposed algorithm is in step 4), 6) and 7)
detecting significant channel taps and estimate residual timing
offset and compensation. Especially, the performance in step
4) depend on the threshold. In order to decide the threshold,
we compare MSE of two alternative cases which occur in step
4); zero-substitution case and no-substitution case. First, we
consider no-substitution case. When this case occur in step 4)
channel estimation is same to conventional DFT-based channel
estimation, and since we set the L as LIMR (for convenience,
we assume perfect synchronization ) to prevent MSE floor, the
individual MSE of k-th subcarrier is
MSEDFT [k] =N SNR (17)
A
Initial timing instant by
, cI i
0
S using correlation method
N
t Received sample
sequence: y[n]
Exact timing point
hLs [n] without noise
N LIMR a
Fig 2. Channel impulse response with timing offset.
 TABLE I
The second case is that we substitute 'y-th arbitrary channel CHANNEL PARAMETERS
tap as zero. As derived in Appendix, the individual MSE of
the zero-substituted channel hzero[n] is: SAT-channel IMR-channel
relative delay Avg. Power relative delay Avg. Power
MSE [k]
MSEzero d LImRN -1 *SNR'
~=7h[y]
2 /3 <n<N
<n<N
- 1(18)
118 (sample )
0
(dB)
0.0
(sample )
0
(dB)
-6.5
From (17) and (18), it is obvious that MSE is reduced by 4 15 16 -3.7
19 -4.7
zero-substitution, if MSEzero- MSEDFT < 0; that is, 100 0
103 -1
MSEzero- MSEDFT < 0 : 107 9
1 13 111 -10
N* SNR < 0 (19)
where N1 SNR
S can be expressed with time domain noise power
of channel estimation is fixed as 100+110
1024 S3
SNR even on satellite
1 13 F 21J2 channel. However, with proposed estimation, MSE decrease
NSNR= E [EX[kl j(wt (20) by deciding significant channel taps. As shown in Fig. 3,
Because the estimated channel hLS [n] includes the noise the performance was significantly improved about 10dB when
power as well as channel information, we add the noise power proposed algorithm was adopted.
to both side of (19) then, we get, Fig. 4 displays the BER performance of proposed algorithm
on satellite channel with Rician factor 10. On satellite chan-
hDFT [] < 2 [EX[k] |2]
F GWt = A/ (21) nels, since timing synchronization with (6) has very small
timing offset, conventional DFT-based channel estimation
where or? 2[^]+E
(7h |2]
[X[k] o%t and A' is optimal achieves better performance than least square (LS) channel
estimation. Especially, proposed channel estimation has almost
threshold for the average observations of channel samples.
However, in (14), we should set the threshold A for an same performance with perfect channel estimation.
instantaneous observation IhLS [y] 2 not for the mean value On IMR channels, since conventional channel estimation
hDF []. Since the available sample is just one sampled value, suffer from timing synchronization and has large timing
the only unbiased point estimator is equal to the observed one offset, BER floor induced by significant ISI. Contrary to
sampled data itself [7]. Therefore, the optimal threshold A for this, with proposed algorithm, BER floor does not occur and
instantaneous sample hLS [y] 2 is same to A'. performance is same with that of perfect channel estimation
and synchronization on IMR channels. Fig. 5 confirms these
E[X[k]l 2]52
A=2E (22) results.
By these processing, we can adaptively determine the thresh- V. CONCLUSIONS
old against the variable SNR and channel environments.
We propose a new practical channel estimation and timing
IV. SIMULATION RESULTS synchronization to cope with the performance degradation
In this section, we investigate the performance of the pro- on IMR channels. Proposed channel estimation and timing
posed algorithm on both satellite channel and IMR channels. synchronization improves the performance both on satellite
Table I show the channel parameters of these two cases used channels and IMR channels. Moreover it does not make MSE
in this paper. The MSE and bit error rate (BER) performances floor on any of the channels by adaptively deciding significant
are examined. An OFDM system with symbols modulated by channel taps based on threshold. We calculate the threshold
QPSK is used on multipath channel. The system bandwidth is used to determine significant channel taps in proposed esti-
10MHz, which is divided into 1024 tones with a total symbol mation. Proposed synchronization, moreover, compensates the
period of 128Ms, of which 25.6Ms constitutes the CP, and the residual timing offset and increases the accuracy of synchro-
carrier frequency is 2GHz. An OFDM symbol thus consists nization. Propose method also effective on terrestrial mobile
of 1024 samples, 256 of which are included in the CP. Unit system.
delay of channel is assumed to be the same as OFDM sample
period. Thus, there is no power losses caused by non-sample APPENDIX
spaced [3]. We assume channels are static over an OFDM In Appendix, we derive the MSE of zero-substitution case
frame, where the preamble is 1 OFDM symbol long and data in (18). The individual MSE of k-th subcarrier is derived as,
are composed of 30 OFDM symbols. Through the simulation, for 0 < n < N -1,
we set the timing offset margin A as 100 samples in this
simulation and set LIMR as 111 from table I. The threshold A, MSEzero[k] =E [ DFT\ {h[n]-hzero [n]j} 2]
to detect the first channel taps is 4 time of time domain noise
power. IMR channel model at table I is based on multipath E DFTN {E
Z6[n -u] (23)
channel profile shown in [8]. Aa a result, from (13) the MSE u=o

2595
 L-1 LIMR-1 2

E c,6[n- v] , [n] 100

LS-CE
V=O,VO7 n=O,no&-yI Conventional DFT-CE
Proposed DFT-CE
where DFTN{ -} represents the discrete Fourier transform. 1 -10
We rewrite (23) as follow:
MSEzero [k] = E [ DFTN {o- 6 [n Y] } 12] 10o2
Lu
CO
+E[ E w[n] exp( j27N)
Ln=O,no&-y
E [10a 12]
LIMR-1 LIMR-1/
+z E
[w [n]w *[m] ] exp(- j2w k(n m))
n=O,no-y m=O,mO-Y
= h ±[] + (LIMR [w[n]w*[n]
10
1) E (24 10 15 20 25 30
SNR
where 7 [2] E [a 2] represents the average power of
-th channel tap. By using the definition of the DFT and (24), Fig 3. Comparing MSE performance with perfect timing synchronization.
the MSE of zero-substitution case is derived as follow:
MSEzero[k] = o-h[Y] + (LIMR - 1) 100
XplXXX XXXXt: alu LS-CE, Perfect synch.
x EE [l] exp ( j2 N)) ----t - .'"'. DFT-CE, Synch. with Eq. (6)
Proposed method
10o Perfect CE, Perfect synch.

x (NE E LX[k2] jexp ( j2 N)))

rr in2~ ~ T~~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ -..

~~~~~~~~~~E \XXTXXX
-

1 LLJ - t - -< '.

- -.
+X[ki1]
2
]
LMR

(7 -N fEI
N2

2 _LIMR -1 (25)
N SNR
Hence, we can obtain the desired MSE equation.
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5 10 15 20 25 30
SNR

Fig 5. BER performance on IMR channels.

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