A frequency domain method for the carrier frequency offset estimation in OFDM systems

Abstract

The rapid growth and development of wireless data transmission brings new trends, challenges and constraints in the telecommunications field. Novel multicarrier techniques are proposed to meet these requirements. The orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is an attractive technique that achieves high data rate and high spectral efficiency and, at the same time, suppresses multipath fading in wireless communications. However, the OFDM is very sensitive to mobility of the transmitter, receiver or surrounding objects. The mobility produces interchannel interference which significantly deteriorates transmission performance. The interchannel interference suppression represent research challenge. Carrier frequency offset (CFO) estimation and its compensation represent a way to improve OFDM system's performance. In this paper, we consider CFO estimation in the frequency domain by using well known iterative algorithms for precise estimation of spectral peak's central peak frequency. Simulations show that the proposed method outperforms standard CFO estimation methods in terms of accuracy. In simulations, both AWGN channel and multipath channel are considered.