Outage Behavior of Discrete Memoryless Channels Under Channel Estimation Errors

Classically, communication systems are designed assuming perfect channel state information at the receiver and/or transmitter. However, in many practical situations, only an estimate of the channel is available that differs from the true channel. We address this channel mismatch scenario by introducing the notion of estimation-induced outage capacity, for which we provide an associated coding theorem and its strong converse, assuming a discrete memoryless channel. The transmitter and receiver strive to construct codes for ensuring reliable communication with a quality of service (QoS), in terms of achieving a target rate with small error probability, no matter which degree of accuracy channel estimation arises during a transmission. We illustrate our ideas via numerical simulations for transmissions over Ricean fading channels using rate-limited feedback channel and maximum likelihood (ML) channel estimation. Our results provide intuitive insights on the impact of the channel estimate...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2007
• Where: CORR
• Authors: Pablo Piantanida, Gerald Matz, Pierre Duhamel
• Keywords: Channel Estimation, CORR 2007, Education, Outage Capacity, Perfect Channel State