Power delay profile and noise variance estimation for OFDM

In this letter, we present cyclic-prefix (CP) based noise-variance and power-delay-profile estimators for Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) systems. Signal correlation due to the use of the CP is exploited without requiring additional pilot symbols. A heuristic estimator and a class of approximate maximum likelihood (ML) estimators are proposed. The proposed algorithms can be applied to both unitary and non-unitary constellations. These algorithms can be readily used for applications such as minimum mean-square error (MMSE) channel estimation.