Patent ID: 8218658

Claim:
A method for channel estimation in a multicarrier communication system based on orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) or orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA) technologies, which receives a signal and performs channel estimation over a transmission channel for the multicarrier communication system, comprising: dividing multiple pilot carriers into a plurality of pilot carrier groups organized according to known carrier spacings; calculating an autocorrelation function of channel frequency responses corresponding to the plurality of pilot carrier groups of known spacings by using the multiple pilot carriers; calculating an equivalent cost function from the autocorrelation function, wherein the autocorrelation function is: R ( F k )= {circumflex over ( H )}( f+F k ){circumflex over ( H )}*( f ) where f denotes a pilot carrier frequency, k denotes a pilot carrier group, F k denotes pilot carrier spacing of k-th group, Ĥ denotes a channel frequency response estimate at a pilot carrier frequency, and denotes averaging over a set of pilot carrier frequencies; optimizing with the equivalent cost function to obtain an amount of phase rotation corresponding to a delay shift; and substituting the amount of phase rotation into a polynomial inter/extra-polation to estimate channel frequency response for at least one subcarrier of the transmission channel.