Low-Cost Channel Estimation Algorithm for DRM Receiver

—In this paper, we consider a digital radio mondiale (DRM) system using orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) with coherent detection at the receiver. The DRM pilots are two-dimensional distribution, linear interpolation and Wiener filter interpolation respectively used in the time and frequency domain as the channel estimation algorithm. We propose a low-complexity improved Wiener filter coefficient algorithm to estimate the OFDM channels. Our proposed algorithm differs from traditional algorithms in two ways. Firstly, we divide the DRM pilots into n groups to estimate the channel responses of corresponding OFDM subcarriers (instead of exploiting the whole pilot at the same time in traditional algorithms). Secondly, we utilize the uniform distribution characteristic of the DRM pilots to reduce the number of Wiener filter coefficients, and this effectively leads to a reduction in computation complexity. In addition, simulation results are also presented to gain further insights.