A Completely Blind Channel Estimation Technique for OFDM Using Constellation Splitting

Abstract: The problem of second-order statistics (SOS)-based blind channel estimation in OFDM systems is addressed in this paper. Almost all SOS-based methods proposed so far suffer from a complex-scalar estimation ambiguity, which is resolved by using pilots or reference symbols. We propose an algorithm to resolve this ambiguity in blind manner using frequency-domain linear non-redundant precoding and constellation-splitting among the alternate subcarriers. The performance of the proposed scheme is evaluated via numerical simulations in MATLAB environment. Simulation results show that the proposed approach performs as good as its semi-blind counterpart for M-ary PAM systems.