Iterative channel estimation and data detection in frequency‐selective fading MIMO channels

Signals transmitted through multiple‐input multiple‐output (MIMO) wireless channels suffer from multiple‐access interference (MAI), multipath propagation and additive noise. Iterative multiuser receiver algorithms mitigate these signal impairments, while offering a good tradeoff between performance and complexity. The receiver presented in this paper performs channel estimation, multiuser detection and decoding in an iterative manner. The estimation of the frequency selective, block‐fading channel is initiated with the pilot symbols. In subsequent iterations, soft decisions of all the data symbols are used in an appropriate way to improve the channel estimates. This approach leads to significant improvement of the overall receiver performance, compared to other schemes. The bit‐error‐rate (BER) performance of the receiver is evaluated by simulations for different parameter setups.