Distribution of the ICI Term in Phase Noise Impaired OFDM Systems

Orthogonality between the subcarriers of an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) system is affected by phase noise, which causes inter-carrier interference (ICI). The distribution of this interference term is studied in this paper. The distribution of the ICI for large number of carriers is derived and it is shown that the complex Gaussian approximation, generally applied in previous literature, is not valid and that the ICI term exhibits thicker tails. An analysis of the tail probabilities confirms these finding and shows that bit-error probabilities are severely underestimated when the Gaussian approximation for the ICI term is used, leading to too optimistic design criteria. Results from a simulation study confirm the analytical findings and show the validity of the limit distribution, obtained under the assumption of a large number of subcarriers, already for a modest number of subcarriers.