IEEE JOURNAL ON SELECTED AREAS IN COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 23, NO.
5, MAY 2005
Robust Channel Estimation and ISI Cancellation for
OFDM Systems With Suppressed Features
Xianbin Wang, Member, IEEE, Paul Ho, and Yiyan Wu, Fellow, IEEE
AbstractA feature-suppressed orthogonal frequency-division
multiplexing (OFDM) system and the corresponding channel es-
timation and intersymbol interference (ISI) mitigation techniques
are investigated in this paper. Cyclic prefix (CP) and pilot tones,
which are commonly used in civilian OFDM systems for ISI mitiga-
tion and channel estimation, create distinctive waveform features
that can be easily used for synchronization and channel estimation
purposes by intercepting receivers. As a result, CP and pilot tones
are eliminated in the proposed feature suppressed OFDM system
to reduce the interception probability. Instead, a set of specially
designed OFDM symbols, driven by different pseudorandom se-
quences, are employed as preambles to avoid unique spectral sig-
nature. These preambles are inserted into the OFDM data symbol
stream periodically and in a round-robin manner. In addition, a
random frequency offset is introduced to each preamble to further
mask the multicarrier signature. New challenges arising from these
feature suppression efforts are studied, including robust channel
estimation and demodulation techniques in the presence of fre-
quency offset and severe interference. Based on our interference
analysis, an iterative ISI and intercarrier interference (ICI) esti-
mation-cancellation-based technique is proposed for both channel
estimation and OFDM data demodulation. Our channel estimator
performs joint frequency offset and channel impulse response es-
timation based on the maximum-likelihood (ML) principle. To re-
duce its complexity, we employ a number of techniques, which in-
clude approximation of the ML metrics, as well as fast Fourier
transform pruning. The performances and feasibility of the pro-
posed feature suppressed OFDM system and the channel estimator
are analyzed and verified through numerical simulations.
Index TermsCyclic prefix (CP), frequency offset, intersymbol
interference (ISI) cancellation, maximum-likelihood (ML) estima-
tion, orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM), pilot
tone.
I. INTRODUCTION
O RTHOGONAL FREQUENCY-DIVISION MULTI-
PLEXING (OFDM) has been widely used in high-speed
communication systems both for commercial and military ap-
plications [1][3]. Other than the discrete multitone (DMT), the
baseband version of OFDM standardized for DSL [4], OFDM
has been chosen for high-speed wireless local area networks
(LANs) (HIPERLAN/2 and IEEE802.11a) [5], [6], as well
as digital video and audio broadcasting [7], [8]. One primary
reason for the popularity of OFDM is its ability to provide
good performance in multipath channels with significant time
delay spreads by converting these intersymbol interference
Manuscript received March 31, 2004; revised December 23, 2004.
X. Wang and Y. Wu are with the Communications Research Centre Canada,
Ottawa, ON K2H 8S2, Canada (e-mail: xianbin.wang@crc.ca).
P. Ho is with the School of Engineering Science, Simon Fraser University,
Burnaby, BC V5A 1S6, Canada.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/JSAC.2005.845408
0733-8716/$20.00 2005 IEEE
963
(ISI) channels into ISI-free channels through the use of cyclic
prefix (CP). In addition, high bandwidth efficiency can be
achieved in OFDM systems by using power loading technique
or adaptive modulation in each subcarrier [19]. Unfortunately,
current commercial OFDM systems contain easily recogniz-
able features that make the signal vulnerable to interception by
surveillance receiver [9]. These include the cyclic prefix men-
tioned above for ISI suppression, as well as regularly inserted
pilots required for channel estimation and synchronization.
As CP is a cyclic extension of an OFDM symbol, it can be
easily used for synchronization purposes in traditional OFDM
systems through simple time domain correlation. Regarding
the pilots, it was shown in [18] that regularly inserted OFDM
pilots create periodic characteristics in the time domain, which
substantially increases the possibility of the signal being in-
tercepted. Although pilots with pseudorandom locations can
be used to reduce the interception probability [9], they are
still easily located due to the use of fixed pilot frequencies. A
simple frequency-domain averaging over a few OFDM symbol
intervals will enable the interceptor to identify their locations.
Since military users usually have higher security concerns than
civilian users, these features should be suppressed in any future
OFDM-based military systems.
In this paper, we propose a feature-suppressed OFDM system
intended for military application. Specifically, we eliminate
the CP and the in-band pilots in the transmitted OFDM signal.
As mentioned earlier, eliminating the CP will reduce the prob-
ability of interception. An added bonus of CP elimination is
an improvement in spectral efficiency. Recalling that in many
commercial OFDM systems, the CP can be as long as 20%
of a symbol interval. As for in-band pilot omission, the idea
was explored earlier in [20]. However, the arbitrary subcarrier
bandwidth makes this system difficult to implement in prac-
tice. In this investigation, we replace the in-band pilots by a
group of preamble symbols driven by different pseudorandom
sequences. To reduce the probability of interception, the modu-
lation scheme adopted for these preambles is made identical to
that of the data-carrying OFDM symbols. This, together with
the use of multiple preambles and the introduction of a random
frequency offset (of up to a half of relative carrier spacing) to
each preamble to further mask the preamble spectral signatures,
results in a system with a very low probability of interception.
Note that a regular OFDM receiver is very sensitive to fre-
quency offset and, hence, not able to decode the intercepted
signal [10].
One difficulty arising from the feature suppression efforts is
channel estimation. Traditionally, channel estimation in OFDM
system is relatively straight forward with the CP. When a CP
964 IEEE JOURNAL ON SELECTED AREAS IN COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 23, NO. 5, MAY 2005

longer than the channel duration is used, the linear filtering ef- frequency of the preamble depends on the channel conditions.
fect of the channel is converted into a complex multiplicative A uniformly distributed random frequency offset in the range
distortion on each OFDM subcarrier in the frequency domain. is further introduced to each preamble to
The channel complex gain on each subcarrier can then be es- mask its spectral signature, where is the subcarrier spacing.
timated by the demodulation of the pilots. The accuracy of the The amount of offset is varied pseudorandomly from preamble
OFDM channel estimator would inevitably be limited when the to preamble. The preamble signal is combined with the data-car-
CP is eliminated, since ISI will appear. The problem is fur- rying OFDM signal before transmission. The estimation of this
ther compounded with the introduction of a random frequency frequency offset and the associated compensation technique
offset to mask the spectral characteristics of the signal. The will be discussed in Section III. Since the main objective of
frequency offset will make the subcarriers lose their orthogo- this section is to present the concepts and procedures of ISI
nality and introduces intercarrier interference (ICI). To address and ICI cancellation, so for brevity, we will not incorporate
these new challenges caused by feature suppression, a robust the frequency offset into the signal model at this point. This
joint frequency offset and channel estimation technique is pro- omission will only affect the preambles but in such cases, we
posed. The technique iterates between channel/frequency offset will clearly state that the signals under consideration should
estimation and ISI/ICI cancellation until convergence occurs. In actually be frequency offset compensated versions of those
comparison with existing channel estimation techniques in con- represented by the model. Unless otherwise stated, we assume
ventional OFDM systems, the major advantage of the proposed an -tap static complex channel
technique is its robustness against frequency offset and ISI. throughout this paper. We will provide specific channel impulse
Another difficulty in the feature suppressed OFDM system responses later in Section IV. For time-varying channels, the
is the demodulation of the OFDM symbols in the presence of channel estimation techniques discussed in Section III will be
severe ISI and ICI. An iterative demodulation procedure is pro- used to obtain accurate channel estimates from the periodically
posed for this purpose. In this demodulator, the ISI from the pre- inserted (but properly concealed) preambles. Channel tracking
ceding symbol (caused by elimination of the CP) is removed via is performed by interpolating these periodic channel estimates.
decision feedback and a tentative decision of the current symbol We will provide in Section IV some numerical results in a
is then made. Based on this tentative decision, the demodulator time-varying channel.
subtracts the corresponding ICI from the received signal (minus Each OFDM symbol at the output of Fig. 1(a) is specified
the ISI from the preceding symbol) and performs data detection by an -point time-domain sequence obtained via an in-
again. This process continues until convergence occurs or until verse fast Fourier transformation (IFFT) of the complex sub-
the maximum number of iterations is reached. It will be shown carrier data , . Preambles are then
later that this technique is highly effective and requires only a inserted into the data-carrying OFDM symbols periodically to
modest implementation complexity. form the transmitted stream. Without loss of generality, every
The organization for the rest of the paper is as follows. An OFDM symbol (preamble or data) can be expressed in vector
interference analysis of the feature suppressed OFDM system form as
is presented in Section II. The iterative ISI and ICI cancellation
procedures for channel estimation and data demodulation are (1)
also given. In Section III, the joint ML estimator of the channel
where
impulse response and the frequency offset is derived. Possible
ways to reduce the complexity of the ML estimators are dis-
cussed, including approximation of the joint ML metric and FFT (2)
pruning. Simulations of the proposed techniques and discus-
sions are presented in Section IV and summarized in Section V. and denotes vector/matrix transposition. The received
signal corresponding to the transmitted signal vector can
be expressed as
II. INTERFERENCE ANALYSIS FOR THE FEATURE
SUPPRESSED OFDM SYSTEM
.. ..
Consider the feature-suppressed OFDM system in Fig. 1. . .
By feature suppression, we mean the elimination of the cyclic .. .. .. .. ..
. . . . .
prefix and the pilot tones. The transmitter in Fig. 1(a) is basi- .. ..
. .
cally the same as that in a traditional OFDM system, except
.. .. .. (3)
that no CP and pilot tones are inserted. Since the removal of . . .
the CP leads to ISI and ICI, our receiver in Fig. 1(b) relies on ..
.
the iterative ISI and ICI estimation-cancellation block (shaded .. ..
area in the figure) to properly demodulate the transmitted data. . .
This is another major departure from conventional OFDM. As .. .. .. ..
. . . .
mentioned in Section I, to reduce the detection probability,
multiple preambles are used with each of them having the
same format as a data carrying OFDM symbol (i.e., same where the size of the channel matrix in (3) is ,
number of subcarriers and same modulation). The insertion and is an additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) vector with
WANG et al.: ROBUST CHANNEL ESTIMATION AND ISI CANCELLATION FOR OFDM SYSTEMS WITH SUPPRESSED FEATURES 965

Fig. 1. Block diagram of the feature-suppressed OFDM system. (a) Transmitter. (b) Receiver.

Fig. 2. Illustration of the ISI and two different observation periods for the ith symbol.

the same size as . Fig. 2 depicts a static multipath channel and
the received signal over three consecutive OFDM symbol in-
tervals. As highlighted by the shaded region in the figure, the
OFDM symbols appearing at the receiver are spread by the
multipath channel, resulting in ISI. The interferences from the
adjacent symbols have to be cancelled for the successful demod-
ulation of the symbol in question, say the th OFDM symbol.
Note here that we assume the th symbol is a data symbol. Im-
plicitly this means the previous symbol is known (to within a
certain degree of accuracy/certainty), independent of whether it
is a preamble or a data symbol.
As suggested in Fig. 2, different observation periods (OPs)
lead to different approaches of ISI and ICI cancellation. For ex-
ample, if OP2 is adopted in the demodulation of the th OFDM
symbol, then ISI from the preceding and succeeding symbols
have to be estimated and cancelled. Note here that OP2 is nor-
mally used in a conventional OFDM receiver. On the other hand
if OP1 is adopted instead, then only ISI from the preceding (i.e.,
the th) OFDM symbol needs to be cancelled (using de-
cision feedback). The exact location of OP1 and the channel
length can be determined using the techniques in [18], [21], and
[22]. In case either the th or the th OFDM symbol is a
preamble, it is understood that joint frequency and channel es-
timation had already been performed based on the received ver-
sion of that symbol, and that the results are used to regenerate the
frequency-offset preamble that is necessary for ISI cancellation.
Comparing these two different OPs, we find that there is slightly
more ISI in OP1 although the overall number of ISI corrupted
samples are identical. However, the drawback in using OP2 is
that ISI from the th OFDM symbol has to be cancelled
during the demodulation of the th symbol. This cancellation
may not be accurate since information about the th symbol
966 IEEE JOURNAL ON SELECTED AREAS IN COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 23, NO. 5, MAY 2005

is not yet available for ISI cancellation at the time of demodu- Procedure I: Iterative Demodulation With Unknown Prior
lation of the th symbol. In addition, iterative ISI cancellation Symbol: When is the first preamble symbol identified by the
from two adjacent OFDM symbols is much more complicated receiver, then the prior symbol is not necessarily known. In
than the ISI cancellation from only the preceding symbol. Based addition, the actual value of the preamble may also be unknown
on the aforementioned observations, we use OP1 for the demod- because of insufficient timing information, not to mention the
ulation of the th symbol and decompose the channel matrix in lack of channel state and frequency-offset information. While
(3) into two matrices for the ISI and ICI analysis. The the receiver can extract these information from the observation
first matrix without knowledge of , the results will not be accurate.
In order to obtain better estimates, the receiver needs to first re-
.. .. .. .. .. move the ISI caused by based on a tentative estimate and
. . . . . then reestimate the channel and the frequency offset based on
..
. the ISI-less observation. This suggests an iterative approach for
.. .. (4) joint channel estimation and data detection. To describe this pro-
. . cedure, we first introduce the equation
.. .. .. ..
. . . .
(8)

represents the channel seen by the th OFDM symbol. The where is the frequency-compensated version of after
second matrix iterations and and are the estimates of and
after iterations. The detail steps are as follows.
.. .. .. .. Step 1) Perform initial joint ML frequency offset and
. . . . channel estimation based on . Information on
.. .. timing and specific preamble pattern is obtained via
. .
.. (5) time-domain correlation of local templates with the
. received pattern. Details of the joint ML estimator
.. ..
. . will be discussed separately in the next section. The
frequency-offset estimate is used to update to
. The channel estimate is used to construct the
represents the tail end of the channels impulse response that matrix required for ISI and ICI cancellation.
generates ISI in the succeeding symbol. These two matrices The iteration index is set to .
have the interesting property of Step 2) Demodulate , the frequency-domain version
of , using the current channel estimate. The
(6)
result is denoted by . Since the decision are
where is the ideal channel matrix, i.e., the matrix that affected by residual ISI, is not necessarily
results in a cyclic convolution between the transmitted signal identical to .
and the channel. Based on (3)(6), we can express the received Step 3) Convert the frequency-domain estimate to the
signal for the th symbol in OP1 as time-domain estimate via an FFT operation.
Step 4) Perform ISI cancellation according to
. This represents a frequency and ISI-com-
(7) pensated observation.
Step 5) Convert to the frequency domain and demod-
where the first to last components in the second line of the equa-
ulate the preamble. Convert the result back into the
tion represent the desire signal, ICI, ISI, and noise.
time domain to obtain .
The signal structure depicted in (7) suggests that the first step
Step 6) Perform cyclic recovery using
in demodulating is to remove the ISI term by subtracting
from , where is the decision on . For any and re-estimate the frequency offset and
reasonable channel signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of interest, the the channel using the algorithm in Section III. Set
probability that is close to unity and, hence, we the iteration index to and update to
will have successful ISI cancellation most of the time. After ISI using the latest frequency-offset estimate.
removal, the next step is to remove the ICI term in (7), Also update the matrix required for ISI and ICI
or equivalently, to perform cyclic reconstruction. This has to be cancellation..
done iteratively because the signal in this term is actually Step 7) Repeat Steps 2)6) until convergence occurs or until
what we try to demodulate in the first place. So any attempt a predetermined number of iterations is reached.
of ICI removal has to be based on a temporary decision of this Procedure 2: Iterative ISI and ICI Cancellation for Data
signal. We summarize in the following the iterative ICI and ISI Demodulation: If is a data symbol, demodulation becomes
cancellation procedures adopted in this investigation. Note that relatively straight-forward compared with the previous case
there are two cases to consider: 1) is the FIRST preamble because channel information has already been derived from
symbol and 2) is a data symbol. the most recent preamble. Furthermore, no iteration on is
WANG et al.: ROBUST CHANNEL ESTIMATION AND ISI CANCELLATION FOR OFDM SYSTEMS WITH SUPPRESSED FEATURES 967

needed, since there is no frequency offset to compensate for is a diagonal matrix containing the resultant multiplicative dis-
when is a data symbol. Consequently, (8) can be replaced by tortions, is an matrix with entries

(9) (12)
and is a zero-mean Gaussian
and the iterative procedure becomes:
vector with covariance matrix ,
Step 1) Perform ISI cancellation according to where is the identity matrix. For a given channel
. and frequency offset , the received signal is Gaussian
Step 2) Obtain an initial estimate of from . The result with mean and covariance matrix . Thus, the
is denoted by . Set the iteration index to . likelihood function for the parameters ( , ) takes the form
Step 3) Perform cyclic recovery according to (9) or by using [15]
Step 4) Demodulate the th symbol and update to
. Increase by 1.
Step 5) Repeat Steps 3) and 4) until convergence occurs or
(13)
until the maximum number of iterations is reached.
It should be pointed out that for a static fading channel, the
where denotes the Hermitian transpose of a matrix. Joint
channel matrix used during data detection is based on
ML channel and frequency estimation can be achieved by
the channel estimates derived from the most recent preamble;
choosing and such that the above ML function is maxi-
see Section III. For a time-varying channel though, is
mized. This is equivalent to minimizing
obtained by interpolating the channel estimates at the closest
preambles. The value of this matrix will change from symbol (14)
to symbol because of interpolation.
Since is a convex function over and , the
estimation of can be obtained by choosing the value that
III. JOINT FREQUENCY OFFSET AND CHANNEL ESTIMATION
satisfies the following condition:
As discussed in Section I, channel estimation has to be per-
formed before data demodulation can proceed. The accuracy of (15)
the channel estimates is crucial to the performance of the overall
system in terms of the symbol error rate (SER). The channel es- This implies that the ML channel estimate is given by
timates can be derived from the preambles, since the latter are (16)
known to the receiver to within a random frequency offset. How-
ever, the quality of the channel estimates depends on how effec- If we substitute back into , it becomes clear that
tive we can estimate and remove the frequency offset in the com- maximizing the likelihood function is equivalent to maximizing
posite observation. This suggests a joint frequency and channel
(17)
estimation approach, as opposed to having separate frequency
and channel estimators. Note that frequency estimation on its where . The frequency-offset estimator
own is quite well researched; see, for example, [10][12]. Joint can, thus, be formulated as
estimation of frequency offset with data or channel have also
been investigated [13], [14]. However, these joint estimators are (18)
too complicated for practical implementation. In this section,
we present a relatively simple joint maximum-likelihood (ML) whereby the optimal solution can be obtained by adopting a
frequency offset and channel impulse response estimator. For proper search strategy. In this paper, we adopt the gradient
convenience in the discussion, we assume an interference-free search algorithm (GSA) described below.
copy of the preamble is available at the receiver during channel We first rewrite (18) as
and frequency estimation. (19)
Consider an OFDM preamble vector
of length . As mentioned in Section I, each preamble where
vector is generated from one OFDM symbol and they are
(20)
frequency-shifted before transmission. Since the frequency
offset introduced at the transmitter is only a small-fraction of is the observation in diagonal matrix form and
the total transmission bandwidth, the received interference-free
preamble vector can be accurately modeled as (21)

(10) is the pattern of multiplicative distortions caused by the fre-

quency-offset . The structure in (19) is appealing as it sug-
where is the deliberately introduced frequency offset gests that the term in the middle needed to be calcu-
lated only once. Since is a quadratic function in ,
(11) we can calculate its derivative, i.e., the slope, at and search
968 IEEE JOURNAL ON SELECTED AREAS IN COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 23, NO. 5, MAY 2005

for the maximum value using the gradient algorithm. This is and the newly formed noise term has the same sta-
equivalent to searching for the at which tistical properties as . When the frequency estimation error is
small, for example, less than 1%, the diagonal matrix
(22) of residual frequency offset becomes

(30)
Since can be rewritten as
and

(31)
(23)
where is the th element of the matrix , it follows which is free from frequency offset. At this point, it becomes
that: obvious that multiplying the pseudoinverse of by yields
a reasonably accurate of h as per (27). Note that the term
in this equation can be precalculated and,
thus, does not consume any real-time resources of the system.
This means actually only complex multiplications are
needed (one complex multiplication corresponds to four real
multiplications and two real additions). Once is obtained, its
frequency-domain counterpart can be determined by using
pruning FFT- a reduced complexity FFT technique [16], [17].
(24) This process needs

with being a matrix whose th element is (32)

(25) real multiplications and

At this point, we can use the GSA to look for the optimal . (33)
Let and be the frequency-offset estimate and
the corresponding gradient in iteration of the GSA. Then, the real additions, where the function returns the integer part of
frequency estimate used in the next iteration is an argument. To further reduce the computation complexity, the
effective duration of can be approximated using a threshold
(26) approach, i.e., tap coefficients less than certain threshold will be
truncated. This is because represents the maximum expected
where is the step-size used in the search. is then used channel impulse response duration. The true channel impulse
in (24) to compute the new gradient and this process continues response duration is often much smaller than .
until convergence occurs. Note that the matrix can always Regarding the accuracy of the channel estimator in (27), we
be pre-calculated and the matrix in (24) needs to be note that if there is no frequency estimation error, i.e.,
computed only once. These properties help to reduce the com- , then the channel estimate is identical to that pro-
putational complexity of the GSA. Indeed, we found that the vided by a conventional ML channel estimator. Consequently,
GSA is much less time consuming than the one based on quan- the mean-square error (MSE) of (27) has a lower bound of
tized search and interpolation.
Equations (16) and (17) indicate that the estimation of
and can be separated, i.e., can be estimated before the
estimation of . This observation coincides with the results in
[14]. Once is obtained, channel estimation can be achieved
(34)
using
We will provide MSE performance of the proposed channel es-
(27) timator in the next section.
which is simply (16) but with replaced by .
IV. SIMULATION RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS
Note that frequency compensation is implicit in (27) because
the term in this equation is equivalent to Numerical simulations have been conducted to quantify the
performance of the proposed feature suppressed OFDM tech-
(28) nique. The demonstration system considered has an FFT size of
64 and a preamble to data-carrying ratio of 1/6. These two types
where in general of symbols are generated in the simulations as per Fig. 1(a).
Choices for the modulation format in the demonstration system
(29) are quadrature phase-shift keying (QPSK) and 16 quadrature
WANG et al.: ROBUST CHANNEL ESTIMATION AND ISI CANCELLATION FOR OFDM SYSTEMS WITH SUPPRESSED FEATURES 969

amplitude modulation (QAM), representing, respectively, the

cases of low and high data throughput. As for the channel
model, we consider both the popular COST 207 models (both
rural and typical urban), as well as two static channel models.
Channel 1

and Channel 2

The first channel has a shorter effective impulse response

(1/8 of an OFDM symbol) and, hence, a larger coherent band-
width. It also has less variation in the frequency response
than . Both channels can be considered as bad channels
for OFDM (because of their relatively large delay spreads),
with Channel 2 depicting a more pessimistic scenario than
Channel 1. We like to point out that the emphasis of the
investigation is to demonstrate the workability of feature-sup-
pressed OFDM and its potential application in future military
communications. Consequently, exact channel modeling and
parameter selections are only secondary concerns in this paper,
as many design issues are beyond the scope of this paper,
such as the choice of frequency of operation; symbol rate,
modulation; antenna types; antenna heights, the terrain, rates
of movement, and other geometrical factors (e.g., distances
between antennas and distances to reflective surfaces).
The MSE of the proposed ML channel estimator in Section III
was first simulated. The results for Channels 1 and 2 were
plotted in Fig. 3, with the curves corresponds to a
standard frequency estimator. The frequency offset injected to
the preambles was set to zero in this figure. Since the receiver
has no prior knowledge about what the offset is, it performs
Fig. 3. MSE of the ML channel estimator. (a) Channel 1. (b) Channel 2.
frequency estimation according to (26) and compensation
according to (28), in the usual manner. This unnecessary
process generates self noise that affects the channel estimate. As The SER of the feature-suppressed OFDM system was also
predicted, the performance of the channel estimator improves simulated. The SER curves for QPSK modulation were plotted
as the number of iterations increases, but with diminishing in Fig. 5(a) for Channel 1, and in Fig. 5(b) for Channel 2. The
return. The results in Fig. 3(a) indicate that for Channel 1, frequency offset considered is 0. The curves labeled ISI can-
only two iterations are needed to approach the lower cellation only in these figures refer to a receiver that only can-
bound in (34). As for Channel 2, the results in Fig. 3(b) indicate cels ISI and there is no attempt to reconstruct the cyclic prefix
that it can not achieve the lower bound, not even when from tentative decisions to improve the error performance. It
iterations are used. The comfortable thing though is that there is is clear from Fig. 5 that ISI cancellation alone cannot signifi-
no noticeable irreducible MSE at large channel SNR. cantly improve the SER performance. Our iterative ISI and ICI
As mentioned earlier, Channel 2 is a more hostile channel than cancellation technique, on the other hand, can provide a huge
Channel 1. improvement in the SER. With as few as one iteration, close to
We next investigate the performance of the estimator in the ideal coherent detection performance (the curves labeled lower
presence of an unusually large frequency offset of . bound) can already be achieved in Channel 1, especially at
The results for Channel 1 and 2 were plotted in Fig. 4. Compared high SNR. Although similar performance characteristics are ob-
to the case in Fig. 3, we can see that the large frequency served for Channel 2, there are, however, larger gaps between
offset essentially has no effect on Channel 1. For Channel 2 the SER curves of the iterative receiver and the lower bound.
though, there is a substantial difference of 1 dB (for the Once again, this stems from the fact that Channel 2 is a more
case) in SNR at an MSE level of 10 . It can be concluded hostile channel than Channel 1.
that the proposed feature-suppressed OFDM technique is rather Fig. 6 is similar to Fig. 5(a) except that we consider here
insensitive to frequency offset. 16QAM instead of QPSK. The data throughput is increased, at
970 IEEE JOURNAL ON SELECTED AREAS IN COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 23, NO. 5, MAY 2005

Fig. 5. SERs of the feature-suppressed OFDM system with QPSK modulation.

(a) Channel 1. (b) Channel 2.
Fig. 4. MSE of the joint ML channel estimator with relative frequency offset
of 0.4. (a) Channel. (b) Channel 2.

the expenses of a lower power efficiency. At a SER of 10 ,

this power degradation is approximately 9 dB. Fig. 7 is similar
to Fig. 5(a), except that the frequency offset is now 0.4 (instead
of 0). It is evident that the impact frequency offset has on the
SER is rather minimal after frequency-offset compensation and
ISI and ICI cancellation.
Finally, the simulated SER of the proposed system operating
in COST 207 rural area (RA) and typical urban (TU) chan-
nels are provided in Fig. 8. Here, our feature-suppressed OFDM
technique was applied to a land mobile environment similar
to those in [23] and [24]. The difference here is that the total
number of the subcarriers is 64 in our system and the CP was
eliminated. Detail channel models for the RA and the TU areas
can be found in COST 207 [25, Figs. 2.4.1 and 2.4.2]. The
Doppler frequency introduced into the simulations was 200 Hz, Fig. 6. SERs of the feature-suppressed OFDM system for Channel 1 with
which is equivalent to a mobile velocity of 270 km/h. A linear 16QAM modulation.
channel interpolator was also implemented at the receiver to
track the channel variations due to the mobility the receiver. The tions are needed to remove ISI and ICI from the received signal.
simulation results for the RA model suggest that very few itera- This is as expected since the RA channel has a small delay
WANG et al.: ROBUST CHANNEL ESTIMATION AND ISI CANCELLATION FOR OFDM SYSTEMS WITH SUPPRESSED FEATURES 971

to track the channel accurately when it is both noisy and pos-

sessing a large frequency offset of 0.4. This gap, however, was
gradually narrowed with the increase of the SNR. For instance,
when Eb/No is increased from 8 to 18 dB, the gap is reduced
to 0.4 from 2 dB. Similar simulation results can be observed
in Fig. 8(b) for the TU channel. Optimal linear interpolator in
[26] and [27] can be used to further improve the tracking capa-
bilities of the channel estimator. It should be pointed out that
channel interpolation will inevitably introduce delay and added
complexities to the receiver. In many applications though, these
prices are worth paying in return for the improved performance.
Other techniques that can be used to improve the system perfor-
mance in a fast fading channel include the fading estimation and
compensation techniques proposed in [28] and [29], and a com-
bination of power control, coding, and interleaving techniques
[30].
Fig. 7. SERs of the feature-suppressed OFDM system for Channel 1 with
QPSK modulation and a relative frequency offset of 0.4. V. CONCLUSION
A feature-suppressed OFDM system was proposed in this
paper to reduce the signals interception probability through the
elimination of the cyclic prefix and the pilot tones. Random fre-
quency offsets were introduced to the preambles to avoid unique
spectral signature. New challenges arising from feature suppres-
sion, which include robust channel estimation and interference
cancellation, are discussed and resolved. Specifically, iterative
ISI and ICI estimation/cancellation techniques are proposed for
the feature suppressed OFDM system. The proposed algorithms
are capable of removing the ISI and ICI almost completely in
static or slow fading channels. A low complexity joint frequency
offset and channel impulse response estimator is also developed
for the proposed feature-suppressed system. Performance of the
system was evaluated via computer simulations. It is found that
its performance can be very close to that of the traditionally CP
protected OFDM system, even with large frequency offset and
severe multipath distortion.

Fig. 8. SERs of the feature-suppressed OFDM system for COST 207 channel
models with QPSK modulation. (a) RA. (b) TTU.
spread. The performance gap between the proposed feature-sup-
pressed system and the conventional OFDM system with CP
at low SNR is caused by the channel interpolators inability
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Xianbin Wang (S98M99) received the Ph.D.
degree in electrical and computer engineering from
National University of Singapore, Singapore, in
2000.
He was with the Institute for Infocomm Research,
Singapore (formerly known as the Centre for Wire-
less Communications), as a Senior R&D Engineer in
2000. From December 2000 to July 2002, he was a
System Designer at STMicroelectronics, Inc., where
he was responsible for system design for DSL and
gigabit Ethernet chipsets. In July 2002, he joined the
Communications Research Centre Canada, Ottawa, ON, as a Research Scientist.
He is also an Adjunct Associate Professor at Laval University, QC, Canada. His
current research interests include digital signal processing, broadband wireless
system, and communication theory.
Dr. Wang is a referee for several IEEE TRANSACTIONS.
Paul Ho received the B.A.Sc. degree from the Uni-
versity of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK, Canada, in
1981 and the Ph.D. degree from Queens University,
Kingston, ON, Canada, in 1985, both in electrical
engineering.
He joined the School of Engineering Science,
Simon Fraser University, Ottawa, ON, Canada, in
1985, where he is currently a Professor. Between
1991 and 1992, he was a Senior Communications
Engineer at Glenayre Electronics, Vancouver, BC,
Canada, and was on leave from the Electrical and
Computer Engineering Department, National University of Singapore, between
2000 and 2002. His research interests include noncoherent detection in fading
channels, coding and modulation, spacetime processing, channel estimation,
and performance analysis.
Dr. Ho is a registered Professional Engineer in the province of BC, and has
been a consultant to a number of companies in Canada and abroad. He was the
coauthor of a Best Paper Award at the IEEE VTC04, Los Angeles, CA, and at
the IEEE CCECE04, Niagara Falls, NY.
Yiyan Wu (S85M90SM95F01) received the
M.Eng. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering
from Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada, in
1986 and 1990, respectively.
He is a Principal Research Scientist with the
Communications Research Centre, Ottawa, ON,
Canada. He is an Adjunct Professor at Carleton
University. His research interests include broadband
multimedia communications, digital broadcasting,
and communication systems engineering.
Dr. Wu is the Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE
TRANSACTIONS ON BROADCASTING.