Low Complexity Iterative Channel Estimation for the L-band Digital Aeronautical Communication System 1 based on OFDM

Abstract:
L-band Digital Aeronautical Communication System 1 (L-DACS 1) is one proposal for the upcoming digital communication system between air control and airplane pilots. This paper analyzes techniques to perform a pilot- and data-aided channel estimation for aeronautical channel scenarios. Due to complexity and processing delay constraints, an iterative channel estimation approach which feedbacks the soft output information from a channel decoder cannot be applied. Instead, we propose a low complexity iterative estimation scheme without incorporating the channel decoding. It turns out that the proposed approach is a promising trade off between accuracy and complexity. It shows that channel estimation for the L-DACS 1 system is feasible even for pessimistic scenarios.