HS-EM based blind MIMO channel estimation for dynamically scalable JPEG transmission

An Expectation-Maximization (EM) based scheme is presented in the context of compressed image transmission for blind Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) wireless channel estimation. This cross-layer content-aware algorithm employs a combination of hard and soft (HS) symbol information from the header blocks of the scalable JPEG compressed image to estimate the complex baseband MIMO wireless channel. The proposed HS-EM scheme can significantly reduce the overhead for communication by avoiding the transmission of dedicated pilot symbols which constitute a considerable overhead in a MIMO wireless system. Further, the unique blend of HS information makes the algorithm ideally suited for scalable image transmission in the fast-fading wireless environment, while it simultaneously avoids the convergence problems typically associated with conventional blind estimation algorithms. Simulation results are presented in the end which demonstrate the performance of the proposed estimation scheme in terms of mean-squared error (MSE), BER, block error rate and PSNR in a MIMO wireless system.