Tracking time-selective fading channels for space-time block coding in impulsive noise

This paper addresses the problem of estimation and tracking of non-Gaussian channels for space-time block coding. Based on the coding/decoding technique, we propose a robust Interacting Multiple Model (IMM) estimator approach in estimating time-selective fading channels when the measurements are perturbed by the presence of impulsive noise. The impulsive noise is modeled by a two-term Gaussian mixture distribution. The IMM estimator is a very effective approach when the system exhibits discrete uncertainties in the dynamic or measurement model as well as continuous uncertainties in state values. Simulations demonstrate that the proposed method yields substantially improved performance compared to the conventional Kalman filter algorithm using the clipping or localisation approaches to handle impulses in the observations. It is also shown that the IMM-based approach performs robustly even when the prior information about the impulsive noise is not known exactly.