On bounds and algorithms for frequency synchronization for collaborative communication systems

Cooperative diversity systems are wireless communication systems designed to exploit cooperation among users to mitigate the effects of multipath fading. In fairly general conditions, it has been shown that these systems can achieve the diversity order of an equivalent MISO channel and, if the node geometry permits, virtually the same outage probability can be achieved as that of the equivalent MISO channel for a wide range of applicable SNR. However, much of the prior analysis has been performed under the assumption of perfect timing and frequency offset synchronization. In this paper, we derive the estimation bounds and associated maximum likelihood estimators for frequency offset estimation in a cooperative communication system. We show the benefit of adaptively tuning the frequency of the relay node in order to reduce estimation error at the destination. We also derive an efficient estimation algorithm, based on the correlation sequence of the data, which has mean squared error close to the Cramer-Rao Bound.Comment: Submitted to IEEE Transaction on Signal Processin

Joint CFO and channel estimation for CP-OFDM modulated two-way relay networks

In this paper, we study the problem of joint carrier frequency offset (CFO) and channel estimation for amplify-andforward (AF) two-way relay network (TWRN) that comprises two source terminals and one relay node. Both the system design and the estimation problem become more challenging when CFO is non-zero in a frequency-selective environment, as compared to the conventional point-to-point communication systems. By introducing some redundancy, we propose a cyclic prefix (CP) based OFDM modulation for TWRN that is capable of maintaining the advantage of using multi-carrier transmission and at the same time facilitates the system initialization, e.g., synchronization and channel estimation. We then apply a least square (LS) approach to solve the estimation problem. The approximated Cramér-Rao Bound (CRB) has been derived as the performance benchmark of the proposed estimator. Finally, simulations are provided to corroborate the theoretical studies. ©2010 IEEE.published_or_final_versionThe IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC 2010), Cape Town, South Africa, 23-27 May 2010. In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Communications, 2010, p. 1-

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

Timing and Carrier Synchronization with Channel Estimation in AF Two-Way Relaying Networks

Two-way relaying networks (TWRNs) allow for more bandwidth efficient use of the available spectrum since they allow for simultaneous information exchange between two users with the assistance of an intermediate relay node. However, due to superposition of signals at the relay node, the received signal at the user terminals is affected by multiple impairments, i.e., channel gains, timing offsets, and carrier frequency offsets, that need to be jointly estimated and compensated. This paper presents the system model for amplify-and-forward (AF) TWRNs in the presence of multiple impairments and proposes least squares and differential evolution based algorithms for joint estimation of these impairments. The Cramér-Rao lower bounds (CRLBs) for the joint estimation of multiple impairments are derived. A minimum mean-square error based receiver is then proposed to compensate the effect of multiple impairments and decode each user’s signal. Simulation results show that the performance of the proposed estimators is very close to the derived CRLBs at moderate-to-high signal-to-noise-ratios. It is also shown that the bit-error rate performance of the overall AF TWRN is close to a TWRN that is based on assumption of perfect knowledge of the synchronization parameters

Lower bounds on the estimation performance in low complexity quantize-and-forward cooperative systems

Cooperative communication can effectively mitigate the effects of multipath propagation fading by using relay channels to provide spatial diversity. A relaying scheme suitable for half-duplex devices is the quantize-and-forward (QF) protocol, in which the information received from the source is quantized at the relay before being forwarded to the destination. In this contribution, the Cramer-Rao bound (CRB) is obtained for the case where all channel parameters in a QF system are estimated at the destination. The CRB is a lower bound (LB) on the mean square estimation error (MSEE) of an unbiased estimate and can thus be used to benchmark practical estimation algorithms. Additionally, the modified Cramer-Rao bound (MCRB) is also presented, which is a looser but computationally less complex bound. An importance sampling technique is developed to speed up the computation of the MCRBs, and the MSEE performance of a practical estimation algorithm is compared with the (M)CRBs. We point out that the parameters of the source-destination and relay-destination channels can be accurately estimated but that inevitably the source-relay channel estimate is poor when the instantaneous SNR on the relay-destination channel is low; however, in this case, the decoder performance is not affected by the inaccurate source-relay channel estimate