Patent ID: 8139666

Claim:
A channel estimation method for multi-carrier systems that provides estimation of the channel response between a transmitter and a receiver, said receiver receives signal transmitted by said transmitter where said signal comprises a plurality of subcarriers that are divided into a plurality of useful subcarriers and a plurality of null subcarriers, wherein said useful subcarriers comprises multiple pilot subcarriers and multiple data subcarriers; said channel estimation method comprises following steps: a. taking a set of said subcarriers to be modeling reference subcarriers and estimating their corresponding channel responses; b. taking a set of said null subcarriers to estimate a variance of interference and noise; c. using said channel response estimates for said modeling reference subcarriers and said interference and noise variance to calculate two autocorrelation values, one with zero lag and the other with a nonzero lag; d. using said two autocorrelation values to calculate delay parameter estimates of said channel which include at least one mean delay estimate and one root-mean-square (RMS) delay spread estimate; e. selecting one power-delay profile, and using said mean delay estimate and said RMS delay spread estimate to establish an autocorrelation function estimate of channel frequency response corresponding to said power-delay profile; and f. taking a set of said subcarriers to be filtering reference subcarriers and estimating their corresponding channel responses; and using said autocorrelation function estimate of channel frequency response to calculate at least one channel estimator response for interpolation, and using it to interpolate said channel response estimates of said filtering reference subcarriers to obtain channel response estimate for at least one said subcarrier.