On the CFO estimation of the OFDM: A frequency domain approach

This paper presents a simple yet effective carrier-frequency-offset (CFO) estimation algorithm for orthogonal-frequency-division-multiplexing (OFDM) system using a general inter-carrier interference (ICI) self-cancellation scheme. The key feature of the proposed algorithm is that it has a significantly wider CFO estimation range than the maximum-likelihood (ML) algorithm. The proposed algorithm first constructs the snapshot vectors through stacking the signals in each subcarrier group of the precoded OFDM symbol. Because the ICI self-cancellation scheme can suppress the inter-group ICIs, the snapshot vectors can be expressed in a form having a CFO-directed response structure. This enables the proposed approach to estimate the CFO by using the multiple signal classification (MUSIC) algorithm in the frequency domain.