Joint Channel Estimation and Tx/Rx I/Q Imbalance Compensation for GFDM Systems

Generalized frequency division multiplexing (GFDM) has become one of the most important waveform candidates for beyond 5G (B5G) communications. However, physical distortions, such as in-phase and quadrature (I/Q) imbalance caused by the imperfections of radio frequency (RF) components within direct-conversion transceivers (DCTs), may cause severe performance degradation in GFDM-based wireless systems. To this end, we first conduct a rigorous sum rate analysis to quantify the impact of I/Q imbalance in both the transmitter and the receiver on the GFDM wireless transmission. An efficient I/Q imbalance compensation scheme is next proposed based on pilots; this is achieved through a nonlinear least squares analysis of the joint channel and I/Q imbalance estimation, and a simple symbol detection procedure. For rigor, the Cramer-Rao lower bounds for both the I/Q imbalance parameters and the channel coefficients are also derived. The simulation results illustrate that the mean square error performance of the proposed estimator closely approaches the corresponding CRLB over static frequency selective channels, thus significantly reducing the sensitivity of GFDM DCTs to physical I/Q impairments.