Comparison of Frequency Offset and Timing Offset Effects on the Performance of SC-FDE and OFDM Over UWB Channels

In this paper, the effects of carrier frequency offset (CFO) and sampling time offset (STO) on the performance of single-carrier block transmission with frequency-domain equalization (SC-FDE) and orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) over ultrawideband (UWB) channels are investigated. The signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) of SC-FDE in the presence of CFO is derived and compared with that of OFDM. The effects of CFO on the bit error rate (BER) performance of both systems are also simulated and compared. Two forms of STO are considered, i.e., a constant timing shift from its optimum sampling timing instant and a random timing jitter. We show through analysis that although SC-FDE is reasonably robust to a constant timing offset, it is fairly sensitive to random timing jitter. The BER performances of SC-FDE in the presence of a constant STO and random timing jitter are simulated and compared with OFDM.