LTE and WiMAX: performance and complexity comparison for possible channel estimation techniques

SUMMARY The similarities between the physical layer of LTE and WiMAX systems trigger the design of a unified hardware platform. As a consequence, there exists a great need to design common blocks that can be adapted to support both of them. In this paper, the choice of the channel estimator is studied where the performance and complexity trade‐off is investigated to seek a unified channel estimation design that can suit both systems under different channel conditions. The performance of different channel estimation techniques when applied to LTE and WiMAX systems is assessed and compared. Two channel profiles with different delay spreads are considered for urban macrocell and bad urban macrocell channels. Three different Doppler frequencies are assumed to illustrate the effect of users’ mobility. The estimators’ computational complexity is also thoroughly studied.Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.