A blind carrier frequency offset estimation scheme for OFDM systems with constant modulus signaling

This paper presents a new blind carrier frequency offset (CFO) estimation scheme for orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems with constant modulus (CM) signaling. Both single-input single-output (SISO) systems and multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems with orthogonal space-time block coding are considered. The proposed scheme is based on the reasonable assumption that the channel frequency response changes slowly in the frequency domain, which implies that the channel frequency response on two consecutive subcarriers is approximately the same. Based on this assumption, cost functions are derived in closed-form, which minimize the difference between the signal power of two neighboring subcarriers. The identifiability of the proposed scheme is mathematically proved, which implies that minimizing the derived cost function gives an approximate estimate of the CFO. We demonstrate that the proposed scheme provides an excellent trade-off between complexity and performance as compared to prominent existing estimation schemes.