Data-Aided Fading Estimation Technique for Shadowed Mobile Satellite Fading Channels

A novel data-aided fading estimation technique that employs both pilot and data symbols is proposed to significantly reduce the bandwidth redundancy of the pilot-symbol-aided (PSA) systems using receivers with low complexity and latency in the shadowed mobile satellite fading channels. The shadowed mobile satellite fading channels are modeled as the sum of a lognormally distributed direct component and a Rayleigh distributed multipath component, and the PSA system employs 16-ary quadrature-amplitude-modulation (16QAM) for transmission. Monte Carlo computer simulation has been used to assess the technique on the bit-error-rate (BER) performances of the system in the light shadowed, the average shadowed and the heavy shadowed Rician fading environments. The results have shown that the proposed technique requires a very low bandwidth redundancy to provide satisfactory BER performances, and can substantially lower the error floors of the PSA systems.