CHAPTER

ESTIMATION OF
FREQUENCY OFFSET

ynchronization is one of the major concerns of OFDM system. Synchronization includes

both timing and frequency offset estimation and correction. The timing synchronization

analysis has been done in previous chapter. This chapter analyzes the effect of CFO and different methods
of CFO estimation. One new method of CFO estimation has also been proposed in this chapter and
compared with other existing method.

4.1

INTRODUCTION
The performance of any digital communication system (Wired or Wireless with SC or MC) very

much depends on the synchronization scheme used in that system. Improper synchronization creates
amplitude and phase distortion at the output of demodulator. Synchronization provides the correct starting
time of a symbol and way to estimate the carrier frequency offset. The three main parameters required by
most receivers are the carrier frequency, the carrier phase and the symbol timing of the received signal
[21]. The carrier frequency of the received signal may be different from that of the nominal value of the
transmitter carrier frequency. The discrepancy between transmitter carrier frequency and received carrier
frequency is called as CFO. This discrepancy may be resulted due to the mismatching of transmitter and
receiver local oscillators and or due to the Doppler Effect when the transmitter is in motion relative to the
receiver. This is called Doppler shift [119, 127]. In reality, it takes a finite amount of time for the
information-bearing electromagnetic wave to travel from the transmitter to the receiver. This transmission
delay introduces a mismatch between the symbol timing at the transmitter and that at the receiver. Recall
that it is required to sample the output of the matched filter at an exact time to optimize the error
performance. The symbol timing (or equivalently, the transmission delay) at the receiver has to be known
in order to eliminate the performance degradation due to the timing mismatch. The carrier phase of the
received signal is the sum of three major components, namely, the random phase of the transmitter
oscillator, the channel phase response and the phase due to the transmission delay.
The process of estimating these parameters is called synchronization. The process of estimating
the carrier phase is known as carrier phase synchronization, which can be accomplished by a phase locked
loop (PLL) circuit. The process of estimating the transmission delay is known as symbol timing

[86]

synchronization, which, can be accomplished by a delay-locked loop (DLL) circuit in SC system. The
analysis of symbol timing synchronization in OFDM system has already been discussed in last chapter.
In OFDM system, there is a stringent requirement of carrier frequency synchronization. The
whole concept of OFDM and all other advantages are depending on the orthogonality of sub-carriers. If
the orthogonality between sub-carriers lost due to CFO, then the performance of OFDM system degrades.
CFO causes a number of impairments including attenuation and rotation of each of the subcarriers and ICI
between subcarriers. The effect of CFO in the performance of OFDM system in multipath fading channel
is discussed in following section.

4.2

FREQUENCY OFFSET ANALYSIS

The effect of frequency offset has been analyzed in this section. To analyze the effect of carrier

frequency offset, re-writing the received signal (2.4.2.1)

( , ) = exp

( ) (,

)+ ( , ) ,
= 0, 1, ,

where is the carrier-frequency offset normalized by the sub-carrier spacing (1/

(4.2.1)
), ( ) is

= 1/

the impulse response of frequency selective multipath fading channel with path gains { ( ) =
0,1, , 1} ,

is the path delay of

process with variance

( , ) is a zero-mean, complex value Gaussian noise

path, and

. By considering a perfect timing synchronization (i.e., timing offset = 0), the

output of FFT block, after CP removal, can be written as

( , )=

(, )

,
= 0, 1, ,

(4.2.2)

Substituting the value of ( , )

( , )=

( ) (,

= 0, 1, ,

[87]

)+ ( , )
1

,
(4.2.3)

Separating the AWGN term

( , )=

( ) (, )

( , ),

= 0, 1, ,

(4.2.4)

where,
( , )=

(, )

= 0, 1, ,

1
(4.2.5)

Now, put the value of

(,

) in (4.2.4)

( , )=
+

( )

(, )

( , ),

= 0, 1, ,

(4.2.6)

After interchanging the summation, it becomes -

( , )=

(, )

( )e

)( / )

( , ),

( )

= 0, 1, ,

(4.2.7)

Replacing the inner summation term by ( )

( , )=

(, ) ( )

)( / )

( , ),

= 0, 1, ,

[88]

(4.2.8)

( , )=

(, ) ( ) (

+ )+

( , ),

= 0,1, ,

where, (

(4.2.9)

+ ) is an ICI coefficient, and is defined as

+ ) =

)( / )

( + )
( + )/ )

(4.2.10)

Now re-writing the above expression (4.2.9) by breaking it into three terms

( , )=

(, ) ( ) ( ) +

(, ) ( ) (

+ )

(, ) ,

= 0, 1, ,

(4.2.11)

where,
( )

)
/ )

=0

=
,

0
(4.2.12)

Form (4.2.12), it is clearly understood that ICI depends on the CFO (), and it can be compensated if
correctly estimated. Therefore, accurate frequency estimation method is required at the receiver to reduce
the ICI and to improve the BER performance of OFDM system. Several CFO estimators are available in
literature and discussed in following section.

[89]

4.3

METHODS OF CARRIER FREQUENCY OFFSET ESTIMATION

In this section, the techniques of different DA methods of frequency offset estimation are

discussed in detail. In DA methods [2, 35, 36, 71, 79, 107, 125 and 142], the frequency offset is estimated
in two steps, the FFO estimation and the IFO estimation.
The first algorithm for frequency offset estimation using preamble was given by P. H. Moose in
1994 [92]. For better accuracy and wide acquisition range than Mooses estimator, another technique was
proposed by Schmidl & Cox proposed in the year 1997 [125]. They used two training symbols with
differential encoding at identical subcarrier positions for CFO estimation. The first symbol which consists
of two identical halves was used for FFO estimation whereas IFO was estimated in frequency domain by
using second symbol. The estimation range of Schmidl & Cox was N/2 times the subcarrier spacing, for
N-point FFT.
To reduce the overhead due to second symbol in Schmidl & Cox method, several other methods
have been proposed in the literature. Few of them, which are considered to be best amongst all available
ones, are discussed here.

4.3.1

Schmidl and Cox Method

Schmidl & Cox [125] designed two training symbol. First training symbol has two identical halves

as described above in previous section. The first preamble is used for both timing offset estimation and
fractional frequency offset estimation. Whereas, the second preamble is used for determining IFO only.
The second block contains a differentially encoded pseudo-noise sequence PN1 on even subcarriers and
another pseudo-noise sequence PN2 on odd subcarriers. The basic concept behind frequency offset
estimation is that the two identical halves will remain identical after passing through channel, except the
phase difference

between them due to the frequency offset . The phase difference between

two halves is obtained by calculating their correlation and given as=

where,

(=

(4.3.1.1)

) is the useful duration of one OFDM symbol and

is the sampling interval. This phase

difference can be estimated as -

&

( )

(4.3.1.2)

[90]

where,

&

( ) is defined as the correlation between the two halves of training symbol. If | | is less then

, then the frequency offset estimate is given by

=

(4.3.1.3)

Otherwise, the actual frequency offset would be estimated by

=
where,

is an integer. The first term is FFO (

(4.3.1.4)
) and the second term is IFO (

), which will be

estimated using second training symbol by following method. After FFO estimation, both training symbols
are frequency corrected by

(by multiplying the samples by exp 2

) ). Then

after, the FFT of both symbols are taken for estimating integer frequency offset. For IFO estimation, the
second training symbol block contains a differentially encoded pseudo-noise sequence on even subcarriers
and another pseudo-noise sequence on odd subcarriers. Let the FFTs of received first and second training
( ) and

symbols is
be ( ). Let

( ) and the differentially modulated even frequencies of second training symbol

be the set of indices for the even frequency components,

2, , 4, 2, 2, 4, ,

2,

()=

= {

} . The sliding correlation between the FFTs and ( ) is given as-

+2 ).

2(

( ).

( +2 )

| ( )| )

,
(4.3.1.5)

where,

is the total number of even frequencies with PN sequence. The value of

at which ( )

attains maximum value is used to calculate IFO.

4.3.2

Best Linear Unbiased Estimator (BLUE)

Morelli et.al [79] introduced the best linear unbiased estimator (BLUE) as an extension of Schmidl

& Cox method. Morellis method consists of one training symbol with

identical parts. The Morellis

algorithm can estimate integral and fractional part of frequency offset simultaneously. This method
basically exploits the correlations of the samples from the matched filter. The estimated carrier frequency
offset is given as-

[91]

1
2 /

( ) ( ),
(4.3.2.1)

where,

is a design parameter, less than or equal to 1 and ( ) is the

In this equation,

1 1

(4.3.2.2)

is the covariance matrix of

[ (1), (2), , ( )] and 1 [1,2, ,1] is an H-

dimensional column vector of all ones. The angles { ( ),

( )[
where, [ ]

component of

{ ( )}

{ (

= 1,2, ,

1)}] ,

} is defined as 1

(4.3.2.3)

denotes modulo-2 operation (it reduces x to the interval [-, ], [. ] is represents the
{ ( )} is the argument of ( ) (output of Matched filter). The ( ) is

transpose of matrix [. ] and

given as ( )=

where,

4.3.3

( ).

),

/ is the number of samples in each section of training symbol.

(4.3.2.4)

Chirp Training Symbol Based Estimator

In the year 2007, Wei et.al proposed a new method which uses chirp signal as training symbol

[71]. The structure of training symbol blocks of Wei et.al method contains two CAZAC sequences or chirp
signal. First sequence is used for FFO estimation and both sequences are used for IFO estimation. The
preamble of Wei et.al method has following form
=[ ( , )

( , )]

(4.3.3.1)

where, ( , ) and ( , ) is defined as first and second CAZAC sequences respectively. The CAZAC
sequence in time domain can be written as
( , ) = exp(
where,

/ ),

is a parameter of CAZAC sequence.

[92]

= 0, 1, 2, ,

(4.3.3.2)

The FFO estimation is same as given by Schmidl & Cox (using autocorrelation) [125]. The IFO estimation
is based on the fact that DFT of a CAZAC sequence is also a CAZAC sequence. For IFO estimation, this
method uses cross correlation between known training sequence at the receiver and partially (FFO)
compensated training sequence. After FFO estimation, the received signal are corrected by multiplying its
/

sample with the term

, where, is the estimated normalized fractional frequency offset. If

( ) is the received signal, then the DFT of ( ) after FFO correction is given as ( )=

( )

(4.3.3.3)
After that, the cross correlation between DFT of known training sequence and the DFT of partially
compensated received signal ( ) is obtained as
, ,

( )

( )
(4.3.3.4)

where,

( ) is the DFT of training sequence

( , ). After that, the normalised integer fractional

frequency offset will be estimated by using following steps:

Step 1: Find the peak location of the two correlations respectively.

Step 2:

If

Step 3:

While

= arg max

, ,

(4.3.3.5)

= arg max

, ,

(4.3.3.6)

< , go to step 3, else go to step 4.

= (

While (

Step 4:

=(
If > ,

+
)

(4.3.3.7)

)} . Go to step 5

(4.3.3.8)

) and (

<
= (

{
Step 5:

While (

};

<
= (

>

)} .

(4.3.3.9)

(4.3.3.10)
| |<

[93]

(4.3.3.11)

4.4

PROPOSED METHOD OF CARRIER FREQUENCY OFFSET ESTIMATION

The proposed carrier frequency offset estimation method uses chirp signal as a training sequence

and exploits the modulation property of FRFT. Once the training sequence is successfully retrieved using
timing estimation procedure described in Chapter-3, it can be further exploited for frequency offset
estimation .The frequency estimation method is divided into two parts i.e., the FFO and IFO estimation
respectively. Therefore, the net frequency offset (f) can be obtained as
=

where,

and

(4.4.1)

is a fractional and integer frequency offset respectively. Since the two halves of the

proposed preamble is identical, the FFO (

) estimation method applied in proposed scheme is same as

given by Schmidl & Cox. After FFO estimation, the FRFT of first half of received training sequence is
taken. Thereafter, the IFO estimation is carried out by searching the peak position in the FRFT of the first
half of received training sequence (chirp signal). Details of both FFO and IFO estimation method are
described below. The IFO estimation is based on the modulation property of FRFT; therefore the
modulation property of FRFT is described in the next section before describing the proposed IFO and FFO
estimation method.

4.4.1

Modulation Property
The term modulation has extensively used in the study of any type of communication system.

Modulation is a process that causes a shift in the spectrum of the modulating signal. Therefore, the signals
that occupy the same range of frequencies can be separated using modulation technique. Hence,
modulation has been considered as a fundamental requisite of carrier based communication systems.
The basic purpose of modulation in carrier based communication system is the translation of
frequency form one range to another (i.e., baseband to some higher frequency range). This translation of
frequency helps in fulfilling the basic requirement of communication system like multiplexing, suitability
of antenna height for design constraint, and narrow-banding [16]. Multiple signals (having same baseband
frequencies) can be transmitted simultaneously using frequency division multiplexing after modulating
them using different carrier signal. This frequency translation also converts a wideband signal to a
narrowband. The concept of frequency translation which is extensively helpful in telecommunication
system are basically comes from the modulation property of transform, specially, Fourier transform.

[94]

The modulation property of Fourier transform (FT) states that the phase change encountered by
the signal in time-domain results into corresponding shift of the spectrum in frequency domain. In other
words, multiplication of the signal by a factor

shifts the spectrum of that signal by

= . If

( ) represents the Fourier transform of the signal g( ) then modulation property can be expressed as

( ) ( )

(4.4.1.1)

In the propose method, a chirp signal, whose frequency components are time-dependant, is used as a
training sequence for frequency offset estimation. Due to this time-variant nature of frequency of chirp
signal, FT fails to localize the chirp signal in frequency domain. The FRFT has already been established as
a superior tool for locating the chirp signal in fractional Fourier domain [40]. A simulation exercise has
been performed for the validation of the superiority of FRFT over FT in the case of chirp signal. The chirp
signal ( ) can be defined as-

( )=

2+

1,
where,

,
| |

,
0,

where, is the duration of chirp, 2

(4.4.1.2)

is the bandwidth of chirp, and is the center frequency of chirp

signal. For the simulation, the required values of different parameters are taken as follows = 8, = 55, and = 1.
The plot of chirp signal, its FT and its FRFT are shown in Figure-4.4.1.1. The optimum value of
angle parameter for calculating the FRFT is obtained by expression (3.4.2.2) as

= 3.13165. As

visible from the Figure- 4.4.1.1 (b), the lack of one sharp peak in the FT of the chirp signal makes it
difficult at receiver to detect the shift of spectrum under noisy condition, when chirp is used as a training
sequence for estimating frequency offset. Subsequently, this drawback can be eliminated if FRFT is used
instead of FT, due to presence of a sharp peak in the FRFT domain, as shown in Figure-4.4.1.1 (c).
Therefore, the modulation property of FRFT has been exploited in the proposed scheme.

[95]

(a)

(b)

(c)
Figure 4.4.1.1: (a) Time domain plot of chirp signal, (b) FT of chirp signal, and (c) FRFT of
chirp signal.

[96]

The modulation property of FRFT is defined in [7], as

( )

where,

( ))

( )

( )

( )

(4.4.1.3)

( ) is the FRFT of a signal ( ) at angle . The modulation property of FRFT reveals that

introduction of phase (i.e. multiplication of signal by factor

) in the time-domain has an analogous

effect of shift in the position of the peak of FRFT of phase shifted signal by

( ) in the fractional

Fourier domain. Using this property, by observing the shift in the peak position

of the FRFT of

received signal, the phase shift encountered in time-domain can be estimated as

=
where,

( )

(4.4.1.4)

is the shift in the peak position, determine by the simulation.

To illustrate this aspect of FRFT, another simulation is undertaken in which the quantity is considered
as 30 with all other parameter kept same as above. The obtained plot of FRFT of chirp signal and of phase
shifted chirp signal is shown in Figure-4.4.1.2.

Figure 4.4.1.2: FRFT of chirp and phase shifted chirp signal

[97]

Based on this simulation result, the phase shift introduced in the time-domain signal can be estimated by
measuring the difference between location of peaks of FRFT of original and phase shifted signal in
fractional Fourier domain. The outcome of this analysis is presented in Table-4.1 as given below
Table 4.1: Analysis of simulation results
Assumed Value of

Estimated Value of

Location of Peaks of FRFT of

Original Signal

Phase-Shifted Signal

3.429

5.303

30

30.013

It is clearly visible from the Table-4.1, that the phase-shift introduced can be measured successfully from
the location of peaks of FRFT of phases shifted signal (within the error of 0.0466 %).

4.4.2

Proposed FFO Estimation

The two halves of training symbol are identical at transmitter side but they will differ at receiver

side by a phase difference which is introduced by the frequency offset and due to multipath fading
channel. Let the received training sequence obtained after the timing estimation is g(n) and the two halves
of this received training sequence are represented by g (n) and g (n), where ( )=
The phase difference

( )

(4.4.2.1)

between g (n) and g (n) is obtained by calculating their correlation and given as

=2

where,

(=

=2

) is the useful duration of one OFDM symbol and

(4.4.2.2)

is the sampling interval. This phase

difference can be estimated as

where,

( ) ,

( ) is defined as the correlation between the two halves of g(n), represented as-

[98]

(4.4.2.3)

( )=

( +

) ,
(4.4.2.4)

where, (.)* is complex conjugate of (.). If | | is less then , then the frequency offset estimate will be
=

(4.4.2.5)
Otherwise, the actual frequency offset would be estimated by
=

,
(4.4.2.6)

where, Z is an integer. The first term is FFO

and the second term is IFO

, which can be

obtained by following the procedure described in the next sub-section.

4.4.3

Proposed Algorithm of IFO Estimation

In IFO estimation, the DFRFT of first half of g(n) is taken and its peak position is determined

which will be utilized for the estimation of Z. The proposed algorithm for estimating the IFO is

Step 1: Take the DFRFT of first half of training symbol.

( ) =[

( )],

Step 2: Find the location of peak of

= 0, 1, 2, ,

( )

Step 3: Determine the value of

(4.4.3.1)

( ).

= arg

(4.4.3.2)

( /2)| 1,

( / ) 0
(4.4.3.3)

( /2)|,

[99]

Figure 4.4.3.1: Average estimate of frequency offset estimation using proposed method

The estimation range of proposed estimator is N/2 times the subcarrier spacing, for N sub-carriers
OFDM system, as shown in Figure- 4.4.3.1. In this plot, an OFDM system with 64 sub-carriers has been
taken.

4.5

PERFORMANCE EVALUATION
The performance of proposed method is presented and compared with Schmidl & Cox [125],

Morelli et.al [79] and Wei et.al [71]. For this comparison, an OFDM system with 256 sub-carriers and 16
cyclic prefix with QPSK modulation is considered. An ISI channel model [55 and 127] consisting of L=8
= 0, 1, , 1 samples and an exponential power delay profile having

paths with path delays of

average power of

is used, wherein each path undergoes independent Rayleigh fading. The mean

square error has been taken as performance evaluation parameter.

Figure- 4.5.1 shows the comparison of MSE of frequency offset estimation with all estimators
considered in multipath fading channel. It is clearly visible that the proposed estimator performs better than
all other discussed algorithms.

[100]

Figure 4.5.1: MSE of frequency offset estimation of different methods with normalized frequency
offset 2.35

With the proposed algorithm of CFO estimation, the performance is improved but at the cost of
increased computational complexity. The computational complexity of various estimators is compared
with proposed algorithm, as shown in Table-4.2.

Table 4.2: Approximate computational complexity of various methods for CFO estimation
Methods
Schmidl & Cox [125]

Complex multiplication
2 + 2

Wei et.al [71]

Proposed

8 4

Morelli et.al [79]

+ 5 /2
+

Complex Addition
( 2 1)( + 1) + 2
3NQ8 N4 2
5 2 3 + 2
1+

* is the number of identical parts in training symbol of method given by Morelli et.al [79]

[101]

The complexity of proposed method is higher than Morellis method [79] but less than Schmidl &
Cox method [125] and Wei et.al method [71], as shown in Table-4.2.

4.6

SUMMARY
A new method is proposed for frequency offset estimation for OFDM system. The proposed

method is based on the localization of chirp signal in the FRFT domain. The MSE of frequency offset
estimation is found very low with proposed method in comparison to other discussed methods, in multipath
fading channel. The betterment in MSE is obtained in the proposed method at the cost of increased
computational complexity.

********************************************************

[102]