Iterative decision-directed estimation and compensation of nonlinear distortion effects for OFDM systems

Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) has been adopted for several wireless network standards due to its robustness against multipath fading. Main drawback of OFDM is its high peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) that causes a signal degradation in a peak-limiting (e.g., clipping) channel leading to a higher bit error rate (BER). At the receiver end, the effect of peak limitation can be removed to some extent to improve the system performance. In this paper, a joint iterative channel estimation/equalization and clipping noise reduction technique based on minimum mean square error (MMSE) criterion is presented. The equalization weight that minimizes the mean square error (MSE) between the signal after channel equalization and feedback signal after clipping noise reduction is derived assuming imperfect channel state information (CSI). The MSE performance of the proposed technique is theoretically evaluated. It is shown that the BER performance of OFDM with proposed technique can be significantly improved in a peak-limited and doubly-selective (i.e., timeand frequency-selective) fading channel. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.