A proposed iterative DFT-based channel estimation for FBMC scattered pilot frame model

The Filter Bank Multi Carrier (FBMC) has been studied as replacement for Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) on the physical layer of the telecommunication systems. FBMC presents improvements on the spectrum utilization, bit rate and robustness to interference, without the need for inclusion of a Cyclic Prefix (CP). Since the orthogonality among symbols on FBMC is accomplished by means of using Offset QAM (OQAM), channel estimation becomes a challenge. This work presents a scattered pilot frame proposed for digital TV and a cubic spline interpolation combined with DFT-based iterative channel estimation method with statistical limit. The system was developed and tested on GNU Radio Companion (GRC) environment and its performance was analyzed on noise and multipath scenarios. The Bit Error Rate (BER) curves shows the better performance of proposed model.