Channel estimation and symbol demodulation for OFDM systems over rapidly varying multipath channels with hybrid deep neural networks

Abstract

We consider orthogonal frequency division multiplexing over rapidly time-varying multipath channels, for which performance of standard channel estimation and equalization techniques degrades dramatically due to inter-carrier interference (ICI). We focus on improving the overall system performance by designing deep neural network (DNN) architectures for both channel estimation and data demodulation. To accomplish this, we employ the basis expansion model to track the channel tap variations, and exploit convolutional neural networks’ learning abilities of local correlations together with a coarse least square solution for a robust and accurate channel estimation procedure. For data demodulation, we use a recurrent neural network for improved performance and robustness as single tap frequency-domain equalizers perform poorly, and more sophisticated equalization techniques such as band-limited linear minimum mean squared error equalizers are vulnerable to model mismatch and channel estimation errors. Numerical examples illustrate that the proposed DNN architectures outperform the traditional algorithms. Specifically, the bit error rate results for a wide range of Doppler values reveal that the proposed DNN-based equalizer is robust, and it mitigates the ICI effectively, offering an excellent demodulation performance. We further note that the DNN-based channel estimator offers an improved performance with a reduced computational complexity.