Estimation of multipath channels with long impulse response at low SNR via an MCMC method

This paper addresses the estimation of multipath channels with long impulse response at low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). The channel sparseness impulse response is modeled by means of a Bernoulli-Gaussian process. Then, the optimization of the resulting posterior distribution resorts to Monte Carlo Markov chain (MCMC) simulation techniques. Special attention is devoted to noise correlation involved by matched filtering: Taking this correlation into account in the algorithm derivation leads to significantly improved performance for both amplitude and time-delay estimation. The method is also extended to cope with Doppler frequency offsets. In particular, simultaneous paths with different Doppler offsets can be estimated. Cramer-Rao lower bounds (CRLBs) are derived and presented together with simulation results.