Blind Estimation of Multiple Carrier Frequency Offsets

Multiple carrier-frequency offsets (CFO) arise in a distributed antenna system, where data are transmitted simultaneously from multiple antennas. In such systems the received signal contains multiple CFOs due to mismatch between the local oscillators of transmitters and receiver. This results in a time-varying rotation of the data constellation, which needs to be compensated for at the receiver before symbol recovery. This paper proposes a new approach for blind CFO estimation and symbol recovery. The received base-band signal is over-sampled, and its polyphase components are used to formulate a virtual Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) problem. By applying blind MIMO system estimation techniques, the system response is estimated and used to subsequently transform the multiple CFOs estimation problem into many independent single CFO estimation problems. Furthermore, an initial estimate of the CFO is obtained from the phase of the MIMO system response. The Cramer-Rao Lower bound is also derived, and the large sample performance of the proposed estimator is compared to the bound.Comment: To appear in the Proceedings of the 18th Annual IEEE International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications (PIMRC), Athens, Greece, September 3-7, 200

Timing and Carrier Synchronization in Wireless Communication Systems: A Survey and Classification of Research in the Last 5 Years

Timing and carrier synchronization is a fundamental requirement for any wireless communication system to work properly. Timing synchronization is the process by which a receiver node determines the correct instants of time at which to sample the incoming signal. Carrier synchronization is the process by which a receiver adapts the frequency and phase of its local carrier oscillator with those of the received signal. In this paper, we survey the literature over the last 5 years (2010–2014) and present a comprehensive literature review and classification of the recent research progress in achieving timing and carrier synchronization in single-input single-output (SISO), multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO), cooperative relaying, and multiuser/multicell interference networks. Considering both single-carrier and multi-carrier communication systems, we survey and categorize the timing and carrier synchronization techniques proposed for the different communication systems focusing on the system model assumptions for synchronization, the synchronization challenges, and the state-of-the-art synchronization solutions and their limitations. Finally, we envision some future research directions

Carrier frequency offset recovery for zero-IF OFDM receivers

As trends in broadband wireless communications applications demand faster development cycles, smaller sizes, lower costs, and ever increasing data rates, engineers continually seek new ways to harness evolving technology. The zero intermediate frequency receiver architecture has now become popular as it has both economic and size advantages over the traditional superheterodyne architecture. Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) is a popular multi-carrier modulation technique with the ability to provide high data rates over echo ladened channels. It has excellent robustness to impairments caused by multipath, which includes frequency selective fading. Unfortunately, OFDM is very sensitive to the carrier frequency offset (CFO) that is introduced by the downconversion process. The objective of this thesis is to develop and to analyze an algorithm for blind CFO recovery suitable for use with a practical zero-Intermediate Frequency (zero-IF) OFDM telecommunications system. A blind CFO recovery algorithm based upon characteristics of the received signal's power spectrum is proposed. The algorithm's error performance is mathematically analyzed, and the theoretical results are verified with simulations. Simulation shows that the performance of the proposed algorithm agrees with the mathematical analysis. A number of other CFO recovery techniques are compared to the proposed algorithm. The proposed algorithm performs well in comparison and does not suffer from many of the disadvantages of existing blind CFO recovery techniques. Most notably, its performance is not significantly degraded by noisy, frequency selective channels

Advanced methods in automatic modulation classification for emerging technologies

Modulation classification (MC) is of large importance in both military and commercial communication applications. It is a challenging problem, especially in non-cooperative wireless environments, where channel fading and no prior knowledge on the incoming signal are major factors that deteriorate the reception performance. Although the average likelihood ratio test method can provide an optimal solution to the MC problem with unknown parameters, it suffers from high computational complexity and in some cases mathematical intractability. Instead, in this research, an array-based quasi-hybrid likelihood ratio test (qHLRT) algorithm is proposed, which depicts two major advantages. First, it is simple yet accurate enough parameter estimation with reduced complexity. Second the incorporation of antenna arrays offers an effective ability to combat fading. Furthermore, a practical array-based qHLRT classifier scheme is implemented, which applies maximal ratio combining (MRC) to increase the accuracy of both carrier frequency offset (CFO) estimation and likelihood function calculation in channel fading. In fact, double CFO estimations are executed in this classifier. With the first the unknown CFO, phase offsets and amplitudes are estimated as prerequisite for MRC operation. Then, MRC is performed using these estimates, followed by a second CFO estimator. Since the input of the second CFO estimator is the output of the MRC, fading effects on the incoming signals are removed significantly and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is augmented. As a result, a more accurate CFO estimate is obtained. Consequently, the overall classification performance is improved, especially in low SNR environment. Recently, many state-of-the-arts communication technologies, such as orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) modulations, have been emerging. The need for distinguishing OFDM signal from single carrier has become obvious. Besides, some vital parameters of OFDM signals should be extracted for further processing. In comparison to the research on MC for single carrier single antenna transmission, much less attention has been paid to the MC for emerging modulation methods. A comprehensive classification system is proposed for recognizing the OFDM signal and extracting its parameters. An automatic OFDM modulation classifier is proposed, which is based on the goodness-of-fittest. Since OFDM signal is Gaussian, Cramer-von Mises technique, working on the empirical distribution function, has been applied to test the presence of the normality. Numerical results show that such approach can successfully identify OFDM signals from single carrier modulations over a wide SNR range. Moreover, the proposed scheme can provide the acceptable performance when frequency-selective fading is present. Correlation test is then applied to estimate OFDM cyclic prefix duration. A two-phase searching scheme, which is based on Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) as well as Gaussianity test, is devised to detect the number of subcarriers. In the first phase, a coarse search is carried out iteratively. The exact number of subcarriers is determined by the fine tune in the second phase. Both analytical work and numerical results are presented to verify the efficiency of the proposed scheme