Joint Frequency Offset and Channel Estimation for OFDM Systems Using Pilot Symbols and Virtual Carriers

We consider joint estimation of carrier frequency offset and channel impulse response (CIR) for orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems with pilot symbols and virtual subcarriers (VCs). We derive the receive-signal correlation structure due to the pilots and VCs, give the evidence of joint multivariate Gaussian distribution of the received samples, and derive an approximate maximum likelihood (ML) frequency offset estimator. We also derive the asymptotic mean-square error (MSE) and an approximate Cramer-Rao bound (CRB) and establish the asymptotic unbiasedness. Without pilots, in high signal-to-noise ratio, our estimator is equivalent to Liu and Tureli´s estimator with N_v virtual carriers. When the pilot number (Np) is greater than the channel length L, our estimator acts as a subspace-based estimator with N_v + N_p - L virtual carriers. A decision-directed joint ML estimator is derived to iteratively update the estimates of frequency offset, data symbols and CIR. The optimal pilot and virtual carrier placement strategies are also discussed. The resulting decision-directed joint estimator performs within 0.8 dB of the ideal case even when the frequency offset is as large as 20%