OFDM carrier synchronization based on time-domain channel estimates

Carrier frequency synchronization is critical to the quality of signal reception in OFDM systems. This paper presents an approximate maximum-likelihood (ML) carrier frequency offset (CFO) estimation scheme based on time-domain channel estimates which retain the CFO information in the form of phase rotation. The proposed ML CFO estimate is investigated under static as well as time-varying fading channels. Statistical properties of the estimator are examined and Cramer-Rao lower bound (CRLB) is derived. Theoretical analysis and numerical simulations show that the proposed CFO estimator renders excellent performance with lower computational complexity. The proposed CFO estimate also has an advantage of allowing for more flexible pilot patterns.