DMRS-Aided Cross-Domain Frame Processing for Affine Domain Path Diversity Aggregation
IEEE Transactions on Communications, cilt.74, ss.14071-14085, 2026 (SCI-Expanded, Scopus)
- Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
- Cilt numarası: 74
- Basım Tarihi: 2026
- Doi Numarası: 10.1109/tcomm.2026.3731785
- Dergi Adı: IEEE Transactions on Communications
- Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED), Scopus, Aerospace Database, Compendex, INSPEC, zbMATH, Materials Science & Engineering Collection (ProQuest), Technology Collection (ProQuest)
- Sayfa Sayıları: ss.14071-14085
- Anahtar Kelimeler: affine domain, Channel estimation, diversity gains, equalization, OFDM
- İstanbul Medipol Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet
Özet
Modern waveform design faces a fundamental trade-off between the computational simplicity of channel estimation (CE) and the maximization of diversity gains. While orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) enables low-complexity one-tap equalization, it inherently suppresses multipath diversity by collapsing resolvable delay components into a single frequency-domain coefficient. Conversely, although affine-domain processing captures full channel diversity, its performance is often bottlenecked by estimation errors. This paper proposes a hybrid domain processing framework that aggregates path diversity to enhance the effective signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) without altering the existing frame structures. Firstly, we highlight the limitations of conventional iterative-search CE in the affine domain, demonstrating that fractional delay spreading induces severe estimation error floors. To resolve this, we propose a cross-domain framework that decouples estimation from data multiplexing. Our design utilizes frequency-domain demodulation reference signals (DMRS) for robust, low-complexity CE, followed by a derived full-rank mapping to an affine-domain data block for coherent path aggregation. Furthermore, we analyze the impact of Doppler-induced channel aging and subcarrier spacing constraints to mitigate inter-carrier interference (ICI). Simulation results under standardized 3GPP channel models demonstrate that the proposed scheme eliminates the error floors of native affine CE and achieves bit-error-rate (BER) performance approaching multi-antenna MIMO baselines, while maintaining the hardware simplicity of a single-antenna transceiver.