Information theoretic approach to synchronization: the OFDM carrier frequency offset example

Romain Couillet (1) , Merouane Debbah (2)

1 SSEC - Chaire Sciences des Systèmes et Défis Energétiques EDF/ECP/Supélec
2 E3S - Supélec Sciences des Systèmes

In practical mobile communication systems, data-aided synchronization is performed before actual data exchanges, and synchronization methods are tailored to the pilot sequence. In this paper, we propose a framework for initial synchronization that works independently of the pilot sequence. We show that classical data-aided and blind techniques are particular cases of this general framework. We thoroughly study the specific problem of OFDM data-aided carrier frequency offset estimation. For the latter, we provide theoretical expressions of performance upper-bounds. Also, a practical thin CFO estimator for OFDM is provided under the form of a novel algorithm which is shown by simulations to perform better than classical pilot based methods.

Domaines: Théorie de l'information [cs.IT]; Théorie de l'information et codage [math.IT]

Romain Couillet, Merouane Debbah. Information theoretic approach to synchronization: the OFDM carrier frequency offset example. AICT, 2010, Barcelona, Spain. pp.AICT - Couillet - 2010. ⟨hal-00553675⟩