Sensitivity of OFDM-CDMA Systems to Carrier Frequency Offset

This paper presents the impact of a carrier frequency offset on the performance of 2 dimensional spreading OFDM-CDMA systems. This is measured by the degradation of the Signal to Interference plus Noise Ratio (SINR) obtained after despreading and equalization. Using some properties of random matrix and free probability theories, a new expression of the SINR is derived. It is independent of the actual value of the spreading codes while still accounting for the orthogonality between codes. This model is validated by means of Monte-Carlo simulations. It is also exploited to compare the sensitivities of MC-CDMA and MC-DS-CDMA systems to carrier offset in a frequency selective channel. This work is carried out for zero forcing (ZF) and minimum mean square error (MMSE) equalizers.