IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 17, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2018 8433
FDM-Structured Preamble Optimization for Channel
Estimation in MIMO-OQAM/FBMC Systems
Wenfeng Liu, Da Chen ,KaiLuo , Tao Jiang , and Daiming Qu
Abstract—In this paper, we propose a preamble optimiza-
tion method for the frequency-division multiplexing (FDM)-
structured preamble in multiple-input multiple-output systems
employing offset quadrature amplitude modulation-based filter
bank multicarrier. Specifically, we formulate an optimization
problem based on the periodic preamble structure to minimize
the mean square error (MSE) of the channel estimation. For two
transmit antennas, we find the relationship between preambles
and intrinsic interferences from neighboring symbols to achieve
the minimum MSE, and derive the optimal closed-form solution.
For more than two transmit antennas, we convert the original
optimization problem into a quadratically constrained quadratic
program and obtain the suboptimal solution by relaxing the
nonconvex constraint. The simulation results demonstrate that,
in terms of MSE and bit error rate performances, the proposed
method outperforms the conventional FDM method at all signal-
to-noise ratio (SNR) regimes and outperforms the interference
approximation method-complex method at low-to-medium SNR
regimes with lower preamble overhead.
Index Terms—OQAM/FBMC, MIMO, channel estimation,
FDM, preamble optimization.
I. INTRODUCTION
M
ULTICARRIER modulations (MCM) have attracted a
lot of attention due to the capability to efficiently cope
with frequency selective channels. Much of the attention in the
present literature emphasizes on the use of the conventional
orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM). How-
ever, the OFDM system uses rectangular window on each sub-
channel, which leads to high out-of-band radiation. Moreover,
the OFDM system sacrifices data transmission rate because
of the insertion of cyclic prefix (CP). To remedy the prob-
lems of the OFDM system, the offset quadrature amplitude
modulation based filter bank multicarrier (OQAM/FBMC)
Manuscript received February 11, 2018; revised September 9, 2018;
accepted October 15, 2018. Date of publication October 30, 2018; date of
current version December 10, 2018. This work was supported in part by the
National High Technology Development 863 Program of China under Grant
2015AA01A710, in part by the National Science Foundation of China under
Grants 61325004, 61771216, 61601191, and 61571200, in part by the State
Key Program of the National Natural Science Foundation of China under
Grant 61631015, and in part by the Open Research Fund of the National
Mobile Communications Research Laboratory of Southeast University under
Grant 2014D09. The associate editor coordinating the review of this paper and
approving it for publication was S. Ma. (Corresponding author: Da Chen.)
The authors are with the Wuhan National Laboratory for Opto-
electronics, School of Electronic Information and Communications,
Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China
(e-mail: liuwenfeng@hust.edu.cn; chenda@hust.edu.cn; kluo@hust.edu.cn;
tao.jiang@ieee.org; qudaiming@hust.edu.cn).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available
online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TWC.2018.2877600
has attracted increasing attention [1]–[7]. Compared with
the conventional OFDM system, the OQAM/FBMC system
provides lower sidelobes through the use of well-shaped
prototype filter and higher useful data rate due to the fact
that OQAM/FBMC does not require the CP. Furthermore,
OQAM/FBMC brings advantages such as robustness to
narrow-band interference and carrier frequency offset. Due to
the above superiorities over OFDM, OQAM/FBMC is being
considered as a promising technique for cognitive radio [8],
professional mobile radio (PMR) evolution [9], and 5G cel-
lular networks [10], [11]. As another promising technique
in future communication systems, multiple-input multiple-
output (MIMO) is able to increase the system throughput
and the link reliability [12], [13]. Therefore, it is believed
that the successful combination of MIMO and OQAM/FBMC
is important and is envisioned to achieve higher spectral
efficiency [14]–[16].
In MIMO-OQAM/FBMC communication systems, the
channel estimation plays a significant role in the recovery of
data symbols. Typically, training symbols are employed at the
transmitter to perform channel estimation. In the literature,
several training schemes and associated estimation methods
for MIMO-OQAM/FBMC systems have been proposed, which
can be mainly divided into two categories, i.e., the scattered
pilots-based methods [17]–[19] and the preamble-based meth-
ods [20]–[25]. Generally speaking, the scattered pilots-based
methods are used to track the channel variations in fast fading
environments, while the preamble-based methods are more
suitable for time invariant channels with better channel estima-
tion performance. In this paper, we consider the time invariant
channels with low frequency selectivity and focus on the
preamble-based methods in MIMO-OQAM/FBMC systems.
The appropriate preamble design is crucial for chan-
nel estimation in MIMO-OQAM/FBMC systems. Different
from the OFDM system, the orthogonality condition of the
OQAM/FBMC system only holds in the real field, which
causes intrinsic imaginary interference between data symbols
and preamble symbols [26], [27]. Note that, the OFDM
system provides orthogonality in the complex field and there
is no imaginary interference between symbols. Therefore,
the conventional preamble design methods in the OFDM
system cannot be directly used in the OQAM/FBMC sys-
tem [28], [29]. Moreover, when OQAM/FBMC is combined
with MIMO techniques, the multi-antenna interference should
also be considered, which makes the preamble design more
complicated.
1536-1276 © 2018 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.