Cyclostationarity-Based Frequency Synchronization for OFDM Systems Over Doubly-Selective Fading Channels

Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems are highly sensitive to carrier frequency offset (CFO), especially in doubly-selective fading environment. Cyclostationarity-based blind synchronization methods are appealing in high-data-rate applications and low signal-to-noise regions. However, the cyclostationarity has not been exploited for frequency synchronization of OFDM systems under doubly-selective fading channels. In this paper, we derive the close-form second order cyclic statistics of the received OFDM signal in presence of CFO, by modeling the doubly-selective fading channel with basis expansion model. Both transmitter-induced cyclostationarity and doubly-selective channel information are contained in the derived cyclic moments, and they are efficiently utilized for CFO estimation. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed estimator provides significant improvements on frequency synchronization performance.