Performance enhancement of the DSRC system using frequency-domain equalization for 5.9 GHz DSRC applications

This paper proposes the use of equalization concepts in frequency domain that exploit the frequency domain channel matrix to combat inter-carrier interference (ICI) instead of inter-symbol interference (ISI) in 5.9 GHz Dedicated Short Range Communications (DSRC) systems. The physical layer (PHY) of DSRC is currently being developed by work group of IEEE 802.11p. The conventional system currently assumes static channel characteristics. Channel tracking schemes were investigated and the Viterbi-aided channel estimation scheme was proposed for DSRC systems that did not explicitly exploit the ICI components caused by the time-varying channels. The performance of the DSRC system is investigated for a time-varying channel using a conventional DSRC model, a decision-directed (Viterbi-aided) channel estimation model, and the frequency-domain equalization design. It is shown that the DSRC system with the frequency-domain equalization achieves a considerable performance enhancement compared to both the conventional and the Viterbi-aided channel estimation schemes in terms of both packet error rate (PER) and bit error rate (BER) at relatively high and low velocities.