Blind estimation of multipath channel parameters: A modal analysis approach

In this work, we propose a novel approach to efficiently estimate multipath channel parameters, which is particularly useful in sparse multipath chann els. Conventional methods [1]-[4] do not fully exploit inherent structure p resent in the combined channel response; the excess number of parameters to be estimated by conventional methods makes the identification difficult. B y utilizing a priori knowledge of the transmission data pulse, the channel identification problem is transformed into the mode estimation problem. The n, the parameters directly related to the multipath propagations are extrac ted in the modal analysis framework, and hence, the number of estimation pa rameters are significantly reduced. Finally, the multipath channel paramete rs are obtained by inverse-transforming the mode parameters. Simulation res ults show significant improvement in normalized mean square error over exis ting approaches.