Low-complexity joint channel estimation and decoding for pilot symbol-assisted modulation and multiple differential detection systems with correlated Rayleigh fading

Joint channel estimation and decoding in a time-varying Rayleigh fading channel is considered. Knowing that the optimal solution or even the truncated near-optimal solution using iterative processing has an exponential complexity which hinders the practicability, a reduced complexity approach is proposed. This approach keeps the existing channel estimation and decoding schemes almost intact, while applying iterative processing to effectively exchange information between them. Thus, the complexity is rendered linear, and estimator adaptability can be easily established. We apply this approach to pilot symbol-assisted modulation (PSAM) and differentially modulated systems. It turns out that the performance is improved and the robustness to fading parameters is enhanced. Through simulations, we also show that the proposed method performs almost as well as the near-optimal design.