Phase noise and carrier frequency offset in OFDM systems: Joint estimation and hybrid Cramér-Rao lower bound

In this paper, a new iterative pilot-aided algorithm based on expectation conditional maximization (ECM) for joint estimation of Wiener phase noise (PHN) and carrier frequency offset (CFO) in orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems is proposed. Next, a new expression for the hybrid Cramér-Rao lower bound (HCRB) for joint estimation of PHN and CFO in OFDM systems is derived. Numerical results show that the proposed estimator outperforms existing algorithms in terms of mean square error while performing close to the derived HCRB at moderate PHN variances. Moreover, the proposed estimator is found to be computationally more efficient than existing algorithms since it jointly estimates PHN and CFO in a few iterations.