Estimation of LEO satellite channels

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a new channel estimation algorithm for low earth orbit satellite digital communications. Low earth orbit satellite channels impart severe spreading in delay and Doppler on the transmitted signal. We model the channel as a tapped-delay-line filter with time-varying complex coefficients. The time evolution of the taps is described by an auto-regressive model. A coupled filter using recursive prediction error methods is proposed for estimating the parameters of the channel. Its performance is demonstrated via simulations.