  In this paper, preamble-based least squares (LS) channel estimation in OFDM
systems of the QAM and offset QAM (OQAM) types is considered, in both the
frequency and the time domains. The construction of optimal (in the mean
squared error (MSE) sense) preambles is investigated, for both the cases of
full (all tones carrying pilot symbols) and sparse (a subset of pilot tones,
surrounded by nulls or data) preambles. The two OFDM systems are compared for
the same transmit power, which, for cyclic prefix (CP) based OFDM/QAM, also
includes the power spent for CP transmission. OFDM/OQAM, with a sparse preamble
consisting of equipowered and equispaced pilots embedded in zeros, turns out to
perform at least as well as CP-OFDM. Simulations results are presented that
verify the analysis.
