The effect of synchronisation errors on MC-CDMA performance

We investigate the sensitivity of MC-CDMA systems to synchronisation errors. We show that the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the MC-CDMA system at the input of the decision device in the presence of a carrier frequency offset or a clock frequency offset is a rapidly decreasing function of the number of carriers. For a maximal load, carrier phase jitter and timing jitter give rise to a degradation that is independent of the spectral content of the jitter; moreover, the degradation caused by carrier phase jitter is independent of the number of carriers. A constant carrier phase offset and a constant timing offset cause no degradation of the MC-CDMA system performance