Spectral Method of Blind Carrier Tracking for OFDM

We propose an adaptive, low-complexity, blind carrier tracking algorithm that takes advantage of the in-band ripple of the orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) power spectral density (PSD). With the aid of a comb filter, the proposed algorithm tracks the location of the ripple peaks and provides an estimate of the carrier offset. Analytical results are presented that predict the expected performance and show the consistency and robustness of the proposed algorithm in environments characterized by time-varying carrier offsets and frequency-selective fading channels. Computer simulations that corroborate the theoretical analysis are also presented.