Patent ID: 8837613

Claim:
A multi-antenna OFDM transmitter having N antennas, N being an integer greater than or equal to two, the multi-antenna OFDM transmitter comprising: a multi-antenna encoder for generating a plurality of data streams, one for each of the N transmit antennas, each data stream consisting of a succession of OFDM symbols, each OFDM symbol consisting of a plurality of OFDM cells, each OFDM cell being associated with one of a plurality of subcarriers; a pilot generation unit for generating, for each of the plurality of data streams, a plurality of scattered pilots, said plurality of scattered pilots being partitioned into M subsets, each of the scattered pilots being encoded on the basis of the subset to which the scattered pilot belongs and the data stream into which the scattered pilot is to be inserted, and a plurality of pilot inserting units, each pilot inserting unit for inserting one of the plurality of scattered pilots into a corresponding one of the plurality of data streams in accordance with a predefined periodic pattern in which a temporal spacing between two OFDM symbols having scattered pilots in OFDM cells associated with the same subcarrier is equal to D s and a frequency spacing of two subcarriers bearing scattered pilots in any of the OFDM symbols is equal to D k , each of D s and D k being an integer greater than or equal to two, wherein M is greater than or equal to N and satisfies a relationship M=M s M k , each of M s and M k being an integer greater than or equal to two, and each of the plurality of pilot inserting units inserts the scattered pilots in such a manner that a temporal spacing between two OFDM symbols having scattered pilots of the same subset in OFDM cells associated with the same subcarrier is equal to D s M s and a frequency spacing of two subcarriers bearing scattered pilots of the same subset in any of the OFDM symbols is equal to D k M k .