Volume 12, Number 1

A Modified Interference Approximation Scheme for Improving Preamble
Based Channel Estimation Performance in FBMC System

  Authors

Radwa A. Roshdy¹, Mohamed A. Aboul-Dahab² and Mohamed M. Fouad³, ¹Higher Technological Institute, Egypt, ²Arab Academy for Science Technology and Martine transport, Egypt and ³Zagazig University, Egypt

  Abstract

Filter bank multicarrier (FBMC) is considered a competitive waveform candidate for 5G that can replace orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM). However, channel estimation (CE) is a big challenge in FBMC because it suffers from intrinsic interference which is due to the orthogonality of the subcarrier functions in the real field only. In this paper, we investigate a proposed modified interference approximation scheme (M-IAM) by approximating the intrinsic interference from the neighbouring pilots to accommodate the complex channel frequency and thus improving CE performance besides simplifying its processing. The M-IAM scheme has a larger pseudo pilot magnitude than other conventional preamble schemes, namely the interference approximation method (IAM) with its versions (IAM-C) and (E-IAM-C); in addition to the novel preamble design (NPS). In addition, the proposed (M-IAM) scheme is characterized by the lower transmitted power needed. The CE performance of the M-IAM is investigated through 512 and 2048 subcarriers via different types of outdoor and indoor multipath fading channels that are timeinvariant such as IEEE 802.22, IEEE 802.11, Rician, and additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN), as well as time-varying channels such as Rayleigh and Vehicular A (Veh-A). Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed M-IAM scheme achieves a lower bit error rate (BER), lower normalized mean square error (NMSE) and lower peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) over the conventional preamble schemes under the aforementioned channel models. The proposed scheme has the advantage of saving the transmitted power, a requirement that could match 5G low power requirements.

  Keywords

Filter bank multicarrier (FBMC), intrinsic interference, preamble based channel estimation methods