Performance Analysis of SIMO-OFDM Systems With Pilot-Aided Channel Estimation

Pilot symbols are commonly modulated on uniformly spaced subcarriers to aid channel estimation, thereby facilitating data demodulation in practical orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) systems operating over quasi-static multipath channels, where the channel frequency response (CFR) remains static within one block. Aided by uniformly spaced pilot symbols, the direct least-square CFR estimation can enable reliable symbol-by-symbol data demodulation within the same OFDM block, based on the principle of generalized likelihood ratio test (GLRT). Such GLRT-based OFDM can be easily incorporated with single-input multiple-output (SIMO) antenna technique to enhance data demodulation over quasi-static channels exhibiting random multipaths. In this article, an upper bound to the average bit error probability (BEP) is analytically derived for this GLRT-based SIMO-OFDM system over quasi-static random multipath channels. The analysis is generally applicable to arbitrary two-dimensional component modulations when the quasi-static SIMO channel consists of independent but not necessarily identically distributed random channel paths with Rician or Rayleigh distributed path response magnitudes. The BEP upper bound facilitates the error performance characterization of the GLRT-based SIMO-OFDM system with respect to data-to-noise power ratio, data-to-pilot power ratio, antenna diversity, pilot density, and pilot power allocation.