On channel estimation and equalization of OFDM systems with insufficient cyclic prefix

Inherent inter-symbol and inter-carrier interference elimination ability of cyclic prefixed OFDM transmission fails for the case of multipath fading channels when the Channel Impulse Response (CIR) length exceeds the duration of Cyclic Prefix (CP). Conventional channel estimation and equalization schemes, if applied to this case of insufficient CP, suffer significant performance degradation. We propose, in this paper, a channel estimation scheme that enables estimation of the complete CIR even beyond the CP length. We then design an optimal MMSE based equalizer for the suppression of insufficient CP generated interference. A robust and low complexity version of this equalizer is also derived. Simulation results for the proposed schemes show significant performance gain at low SNRs and drastic reduction of the error floors at high SNRs and more importantly, as opposed to earlier schemes, without any loss in transmission efficiency.