Improvement in Channel Estimation and Error Rate Performance in Mobile Cooperative OFDM Systems with Intercarrier Interference

In mobile cooperative orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems with amplify-and-forward (AF) relays, in which the source and relay terminals are moving, Doppler frequency might become very large due to the formation of double-hop channels, possibly causing very large intercarrier interference (ICI). Therefore, ICI mitigation technique capable of reducing the impact of high Doppler frequency is required. This paper reports the study of ICI mitigation technique that uses frequency domain equalizer (FDE) with improvements in three aspects, namely, better channel estimation using cubic-spline approximation, use of selection combining to utilize cooperative diversity in order to suppress ICI, and simple error correcting code with double interleaving to suppress errors due to residual ICI. By using the proposed ICI mitigation technique, error rate performance of mobile cooperative OFDM systems can be improved significantly. Even at high Doppler frequencies, error floors due to residual ICI can be decreased by up to two decades.