Comparison of Preamble and Cyclic Prefix Method for Frequency Synchronization in OFDM Systems

In this paper, we propose a comparison method of training symbol (or preamble) and Cyclic Prefix (CP) to improved the frequency synchronization in orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM). The problems that arise in OFDM system is the time-shift and frequency mismatch between the oscillators in the transmitter and the receiver. It is known as a Carrier Frequency Offset (CEO) problem. By exploring the signal to noise ratio (SNR) and CFO, the bit error rate (BER) performance can be improved significantly for both method. From simulation results, it is found that both method of CP and the preamble work optimally in the range of CFO values between -0.4 to 0.4. Otherwise, on CFO < -0.5 and CFO > 0.5 both method would produce an unacceptable BER Additionally, we found that preamble method perform better than CP for all the value of CFO.