Data-Carrier Aided Carrier Frequency Offset Estimation for OFDM Systems

In order to prevent inter-carrier interference (ICI), carrier frequency offset (CFO) estimation is essential and crucial for OFDM systems. Conventional fractional CFO estimation can be classified into two categories: the pilot tone-aided (PTA) schemes and the cyclic prefix-based schemes (CPB). In addition to the subcarriers dedicated for channel/frequency estimation, data subcarriers are also candidates that may be potentially used to improve the CFO estimation. In this work, we propose novel data-subcarrier aided CFO estimation algorithms, without the need of demodulating the data in advance, for M-PSK data modulated OFDM systems. According to the simulation results, it is found that the proposed algorithms can significantly improve the CFO estimation performance at the cost of an increase in computational complexity.