Low-complexity blind carrier frequency recovery for OFDM signals over frequency-selective radio channels

This paper introduces a blind (i.e., data independent) algorithm for carrier frequency offset recovery in an orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) receiver operating over frequency-selective fading channels. The main idea behind this algorithm is to exploit the time-frequency-domain exchange inherent to the modulation scheme. Due to this feature, a carrier frequency offset has a similar impact on OFDM as a clock timing offset has in a quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) system. The scheme we propose is a variant of Oerder-Meyr's feedforward clock recovery. Its performance is assessed by simulation, and the results are compared to those obtained from Van de Beek-Sandell-Borjesson's frequency synchronizer, which bears comparable complexity. The new scheme is shown to outperform the latter over frequency-selective fading channels, notably at medium to high signal-to-noise ratios. We also evaluated the efficiency of two different (time domain and frequency domain) offset correction strategies embedded in a particular OFDM receiver.