Impairments such as time varying phase noise (PHN) and carrier frequency offset (CFO) result in loss of synchronization and poor performance of multi-relay communication systems. Joint estimation of these impairments is necessary in order to correctly decode the received signal at the destination. In this paper, we address spectrally efficient multi-relay transmission scenarios where all the relays simultaneously communicate with the destination. We propose an iterative pilot-aided algorithm based on the expectation conditional maximization for joint estimation of multipath channels, Wiener PHNs, and CFOs in decode-and-forward-based multi-relay orthogonal frequency division multiplexing systems. Next, a new expression of the hybrid Cramér-Rao lower bound (HCRB) for the multi-parameter estimation problem is derived. Finally, an iterative receiver based on an extended Kalman filter for joint data detection and PHN tracking is employed. Numerical results show that the proposed estimator outperforms existing algorithms and its mean square error performance is close to the derived HCRB at different signal-to-noise ratios for different PHN variances. In addition, the combined estimation algorithm and the iterative receiver can significantly improve average bit-error rate (BER) performance compared with existing algorithms. In addition, the BER performance of the proposed system is close to the ideal case of perfect channel impulse responses, PHNs, and CFOs estimation.

Cooperative communication systems employ cooperation among nodes in a wireless network to increase data throughput and robustness to signal fading. However, such advantages are only possible if there exist perfect synchronization among all nodes. Impairments like channel multipath, time varying phase noise (PHN) and carrier frequency offset (CFO) result in the loss of synchronization and diversity performance of cooperative communication systems. Joint estimation of these multiple impairments is necessary in order to correctly decode the received signal in cooperative systems. In this paper, we propose an iterative pilot-aided algorithm based on expectation conditional maximization (ECM) for joint estimation of multipath channels, Wiener PHNs, and CFOs in amplify-and-forward (AF) based cooperative orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) system. Numerical results show that the proposed estimator achieves mean square error performance close to the derived hybrid Cramer-Rao lower bound (HCRB) for different PHN variances.

Oscillator phase noise (PHN) and carrier frequency offset (CFO) can adversely impact the performance of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems, since they can result in inter carrier interference and rotation of the signal constellation. In this paper, we propose an expectation conditional maximization (ECM) based algorithm for joint estimation of channel, PHN, and CFO in OFDM systems. We present the signal model for the estimation problem and derive the hybrid Cramér-Rao lower bound (HCRB) for the joint estimation problem. Next, we propose an iterative receiver based on an extended Kalman filter for joint data detection and PHN tracking. Numerical results show that, compared to existing algorithms, the performance of the proposed ECM-based estimator is closer to the derived HCRB and outperforms the existing estimation algorithms at moderate-to-high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). In addition, the combined estimation algorithm and iterative receiver are more computationally efficient than existing algorithms and result in improved average uncoded and coded bit error rate (BER) performance.

In this paper, we propose a new unequal error protection (UEP) scheme, called video packet partitioning for three-dimensional (3-D) video transmission. We also propose a new 3-D video transceiver structure that adopts various UEP schemes based on the packet partitioning. The proposed schemes are applied for the modern 3-D video techniques, i.e., multiview video coding (MVC) and color plus depth (VpD). The schemes for MVC and VpD are tested over cooperative multiinput multi-output-orthogonal division multiplexing (MIMOOFDM) systems. For channel adaptation, we propose switching operations between the proposed schemes to achieve a trade-off between the system complexity and performance. Experimental results show that the proposed schemes significantly achieve high video quality at different signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) in the wireless channel with the lowest possible bandwidth and system complexity compared to the direct transmission schemes.