CRB for Carrier Frequency Offset Estimation with Pilot and Virtual Subcarriers

The Cramer Rao bound (CRB) for the carrier frequency offset (CFO) estimation with OFDM blocks consisting of virtual, pilot and data subcarriers is derived in this paper. From the CRB derived in the general case that all the three kinds of subcarriers exist, the CRB for the special cases that one or two kinds of the subcarriers are absent can be easily deduced. Further more, the derived CRB is a tight lower bound as well designed estimators, e.g. the maximum likelihood (ML) estimator, can achieve it at high signal to noise ratio (SNR). Thus, the derived CRB is a good benchmark for evaluating many different CFO estimators.

[1]  Hao Wang,et al.  Maximum likelihood estimation of OFDM carrier frequency offset , 2002, 2002 IEEE International Conference on Communications. Conference Proceedings. ICC 2002 (Cat. No.02CH37333).

[2]  Paul H. Moose,et al.  A technique for orthogonal frequency division multiplexing frequency offset correction , 1994, IEEE Trans. Commun..

[3]  Sergio Barbarossa,et al.  Non-data-aided carrier offset estimators for OFDM with null subcarriers: identifiability, algorithms, and performance , 2001, IEEE J. Sel. Areas Commun..

[4]  Feifei Gao,et al.  Blind maximum likelihood CFO estimation for OFDM systems via polynomial rooting , 2006, IEEE Signal Processing Letters.

[5]  P. Bianchi,et al.  Joint frequency offset and channel estimation in the OFDMA uplink: Cramer-Rao bounds and training sequence design , 2005, IEEE 6th Workshop on Signal Processing Advances in Wireless Communications, 2005..

[6]  U. Tureli,et al.  A high-efficiency carrier estimator for OFDM communications , 1997, IEEE Communications Letters.

[7]  Umberto Mengali,et al.  Carrier-frequency estimation for transmissions over selective channels , 2000, IEEE Trans. Commun..

[8]  Hlaing Minn,et al.  An average Cramer-Rao bound for frequency offset estimation in frequency-selective fading channels , 2010, IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications.

[9]  Heinrich Meyr,et al.  Frequency synchronization algorithms for OFDM systems suitable for communication over frequency selective fading channels , 1994, Proceedings of IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC).

[10]  Umberto Mengali,et al.  An improved frequency offset estimator for OFDM applications , 1999, 1999 IEEE Communications Theory Mini-Conference (Cat. No.99EX352).

[11]  Feifei Gao,et al.  Scattered Pilots and Virtual Carriers Based Frequency Offset Tracking for OFDM Systems: Algorithms, Identifiability, and Performance Analysis , 2008, IEEE Transactions on Communications.