High Resolution Carrier Frequency Offset Estimation in Time-Reversal Wideband Communications

Time-reversal (TR) wideband communication systems enjoy the spatial–temporal focusing effect in a rich-scattering environment. However, the performance degrades in the presence of carrier frequency offset (CFO). The impact of CFO can be mitigated by compensating the estimated CFO values obtained using CFO estimators. Yet, CFO estimators in literature cannot work well in wideband TR systems due to the fact that the normalized CFO values are very small and thus cannot be estimated accurately using conventional schemes. To address this issue, we propose four CFO estimators which are capable of accurate CFO estimations for wideband TR systems. The theoretical performances of the proposed estimators are analyzed. Additionally, realizing that phase wrapping might introduce severe bias into CFO estimations, we present the conditions on the system parameters so that phase wrapping can be avoided. Extensive simulations and experimental results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed methods.