5220
12, DECEMBER 2008
Integer Frequency Offset Recovery in
OFDM Transmissions over Selective Channels
Michele Morelli, Senior Member, IEEE, and Marco Moretti, Member, IEEE
Abstract—Carrier frequency offset (CFO) in OFDM systems
is normally estimated in two steps. The fractional part of
the CFO is recovered first and the remaining ambiguity is
subsequently resolved by detecting the integer frequency offset
(IFO). Conventional IFO recovery algorithms for OFDM signals
are sensitive to multipath distortions as they are derived without
explicitly taking into account the frequency selectivity of the
transmission channel. In this paper, we propose a novel scheme
in which the channel response and IFO are jointly estimated
using a maximum likelihood (ML) approach. In doing so we
exploit one or more pilot blocks placed at the beginning of the
frame and carrying known symbols. Since the complexity of the
resulting ML algorithm may be relatively large, we also suggest
suboptimal solutions unifying various earlier proposals.
Computer simulations are used to demonstrate the superiority
of the proposed schemes over existing alternatives. It is shown
that excellent performance can be achieved with affordable
complexity even in the presence of highly dispersive channels.
Index Terms—Integer frequency offset estimation, channel
estimation, OFDM.
I. I NTRODUCTION
O RTHOGONAL frequency-division multiplexing
(OFDM) is a parallel transmission technique which is
proven to be effective against multipath fading and impulsive
noise [1]. For this reason, it is adopted in many wireless
systems including digital audio broadcasting (DAB) [2],
digital video broadcasting (DVB) [3] and the IEEE 802.11a
wireless local area network (WLAN) [4].
It is widely known that OFDM is extremely sensitive to car-
rier frequency offsets (CFOs) caused by Doppler shifts and/or
oscillator instabilities. As the subcarriers are closely spaced
in frequency compared to the channel bandwidth, the CFO
must be kept within a small fraction of the subcarrier distance
to avoid severe error rate degradation. One possible approach
for frequency synchronization in OFDM is to jointly estimate
the CFO and channel impulse response (CIR) by means of
maximum likelihood (ML) methods [5], [6]. Schemes derived
following this line of reasoning exhibit good accuracy at the
price of a large computational requirement as they locate the
maximum of the likelihood function through an exhaustive
grid-search. To reduce the system complexity, in existing
OFDM networks the frequency error is normally decomposed
into an integer part, multiple of the subcarrier spacing, plus
a fractional part. If not properly compensated, the former
Manuscript received October 16, 2007; revised February 25, 2008; accepted
May 21, 2008. The associate editor coordinating the review of this letter and
approving it for publication was Y. J. (A.) Zhang.
The authors are with the Department of Information Engineering,
University of Pisa. Via G. Caruso 16 , 56122 Pisa, Italy (e-mail:
marco.moretti@iet.unipi.it).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/T-WC.2008.071144
1536-1276/08$25.00 
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 7, NO.
results into a circular shift of the subcarrier indices while the
latter produces interchannel interference (ICI) due to a loss
of orthogonality among subcarriers. Conventional methods for
estimating the fractional frequency offset (FFO) operate in
the time-domain and measure the phase shift between the
repetitive parts of a dedicated pilot block [7]-[10]. In contrast,
the integer frequency offset (IFO) is typically estimated in
the frequency-domain using a differentially encoded training
sequence. A representative sample of IFO recovery techniques
for OFDM can be found in [10]-[16]. In particular, the
schemes discussed in [10]-[12] exploit two pilot blocks with
differential encoding at identical subcarrier positions, while in
[13]-[16] only one training block is employed with differential
encoding among adjacent subcarriers. In the latter case the
system overhead is reduced by a factor of two, but the quality
of the IFO estimates may be poor in the presence of highly
dispersive channels. The reader is referred to [17] for a
comprehensive survey on IFO recovery techniques for OFDM
burst transmissions.
In this paper we present a novel scheme for jointly estimat-
ing the CIR and IFO in OFDM systems. In doing so we adopt
an ML approach and exploit one or more pilot blocks placed
at the beginning of the data frame. A fundamental assumption
behind our scheme is that the FFO has already been estimated
and compensated for. To facilitate this task, the first pilot
block is divided into some repetitive segments and standard
techniques like those described in [7] or [10] are used for FFO
recovery. The remaining pilot blocks (if any) are employed
to improve the accuracy of the CIR and IFO estimates.
Compared to earlier IFO recovery algorithms, our approach
provides better results at the cost of increased complexity.
For this reason, we also suggest some approximations that
aim at reducing the overall computational burden. It is shown
that excellent performance can be achieved with affordable
complexity if the system parameters are carefully designed.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Next Section
describes the system model and introduces basic notation. In
Sect. III we address the joint ML estimation of the channel
response and IFO. A method to reduce the complexity of
the ML solution is also illustrated. In Sect. IV we discuss
the relationship between our scheme and some existing IFO
recovery techniques. Simulation results are presented in Sect.
V while conclusions are offered in Sect. VI.
II. S YSTEM MODEL AND PROBLEM FORMULATION
We consider an OFDM system with N subcarriers sepa-
rated by Δf in the frequency domain. To avoid interblock
interference (IBI), each OFDM block is preceded by a cyclic
prefix (CP) longer than the CIR. After baseband conversion
c 2008 IEEE
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 7, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2008
and filtering, the received waveform is sampled at a rate fs =
N Δf . Due to Doppler shifts and/or oscillator instabilities, the
resulting samples are affected by a frequency error and may
be written as
x(k) = ej2πξk/N s(k) + n(k)
where s(k) is the signal component, n(k) accounts for thermal
noise and ξ represents the CFO normalized to Δf . If not
properly compensated, the CFO destroys orthogonality among
subcarriers, thereby leading to significant performance degra-
dations. To facilitate the synchronization task, in many OFDM
systems the data frame is preceded by a specified number J
of pilot blocks. In this work we assume that the first block is
divided into Q ≥ 2 identical segments, each containing N/Q
samples. In practice, it can be generated in the frequency-
domain by transmitting pilot symbols on the subcarriers with
indices multiple of Q while setting the others to zero. The
remaining training blocks have no repetitive structure and
convey pseudo-noise (PN) sequences of length N . Such a
preamble structure is compliant with IEEE 802.11a WLAN
systems, where the frame starts with ten short pilot blocks of
length N/4 followed by two additional blocks carrying known
symbols [18].
In principle, accurate frequency estimation can be accom-
plished by applying ML methods over an observation window
spanning all received training blocks [5], [6]. Unfortunately,
maximizing the likelihood function requires an exhaustive
grid-search, which in some cases may be prohibitively com-
plex. A more practical solution is suggested in [7], where the
repetitive structure of the first training block is exploited to get
a frequency estimate with affordable complexity. This scheme
has an acquisition range of ±Q/2 the subcarrier spacing and,
in consequence, the estimated CFO may be plagued by a
residual ambiguity of multiples of Q. To take such ambiguity
into account, we decompose the normalized CFO as
ξ = Q(ν + η)
where ν is the FFO belonging to the interval (−1/2, 1/2]
while η is an integer parameter that represents the residual
IFO. In the sequel we assume that FFO recovery is accom-
plished on the basis of the first pilot block as indicated
in [7]. The estimated FFO ν̂ is then used to counter-rotate
the received samples at an angular speed 2πQν̂/N , yielding
y(k) = e−j2πQν̂k/N x(k).
To proceed further, we denote by h =
[h(0), h(1), . . . , h(L − 1)]T the discrete-time CIR of
length L (the superscript (·)T is the transpose operator) and
call
L−1
 where h̃ and η̃ are trial values of h and η, respectively, while
H(n) = h()e−j2πn/N 0 ≤ n ≤ N − 1 (3)
=0
the channel frequency response over the nth subcarrier. For
simplicity, the channel is assumed static during the over-
all observation window. Hence, collecting the DFT of the
ith received pilot block (i = 1, 2, . . . , J) into a vector
Yi = [Yi (0), Yi (1), . . . , Yi (N − 1)]T , in case of perfect FFO
compensation we may write
 
Yi (n) = H(|n − Qη|N )ci |n − Qη|N ej2πQ(i−1)ηNg /N + Wi (n)
(4)
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5221
where Ng is the CP length in sampling periods, |z|N is the
value z reduced to the interval [0, N − 1] and ci (n) is the pilot
symbol onto the nth subcarrier of the ith block. Recalling that
the first block is composed by Q identical parts, it is c1 (n) = 0
when n is not multiple of Q. The quantities {Wi (n)} represent
(1)
the noise contribution and are modeled as circularly symmetric
2
Gaussian random variables with zero mean and variance σw .
They are assumed to be statistically independent for different
values of n and i. It is worth noting that the assumption of
ideal FFO recovery is used here only to derive the IFO and
channel estimation algorithm. The effect of imperfect FFO
compensation on the system performance will be assessed later
by simulation.
To simplify the notation, we call {di (n) ; −∞ < n <
+∞} the repetition with period N of the pilot sequence
{ci (n) ; 0 ≤ n ≤ N − 1}. In such a case, ci (|n − Qη|N )
can be equivalently replaced by di (n − Qη). Hence, letting
Di (η) =diag{di (n − Qη) ; 0 ≤ n ≤ N − 1}, we may rewrite
(4) in matrix notation as
Yi = ej2πQ(i−1)ηNg /N Di (η)F(η)h + Wi for i = 1, 2, . . . , J
(5)
where F(η) is an N × L matrix with entries
[F(η)]n, = e−j2π(n−Qη)/N 0 ≤ n ≤ N − 1, 0 ≤  ≤ L−1
(6)
and Wi = [Wi (0), Wi (1), . . . , Wi (N − 1)]T is a Gaussian
2
distributed vector with zero mean and covariance matrix σw IN
(we denote IN the identity matrix of order N ). As the signal
component in (5) depends on h and η, we may estimate these
parameters from the observation of {Y i }Ji=1 . A solution to
this problem is now derived following an ML approach. In
doing so we assume that symbols ci (n) are known and belong
to a PSK constellation with power |ci (n)|2 = Pi . Letting
Pi = P for 2 ≤ i ≤ J and P1 = QP results into pilot blocks
with the same average energy EB = P N .
(2) III. J OINT ESTIMATION OF THE CIR AND INTEGER CFO
A. ML estimation
Given the unknown parameters (h,η), from (5) it turns
out that vectors Yi are statistically independent and Gaussian
distributed with mean ej2πQ(i−1)ηNg /N Di (η)F(η)h and co-
2
variance matrix σw IN . Hence, after skipping irrelevant factors
and additive terms, the log-likelihood function for (h,η) takes
the form
J 
 2
 
Λ(h̃, η̃) = − Yi − ej2πQ(i−1)η̃Ng /N Di (η̃)F(η̃)h̃
i=1
(7)
· represents the Euclidean norm of the enclosed vector. The
joint ML estimate of the unknown parameters is obtained by
searching for the global maximum of Λ(h̃, η̃). To do so, we
keep η̃ fixed and let h̃ vary in the 2L-dimensional space CL .
Then, using the identity FH (η̃)DH i (η̃)Di (η̃)F(η̃) = EB IL ,
which holds true for L ≤ N/Q, we see that Λ(h̃, η̃) is
maximum when
J
1 
ĥ(η̃) = FH (η̃) DH
i (η̃)Yi e
−j2πQ(i−1)η̃Ng /N
(8)
JEB i=1
5222 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 7, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2008

where the superscript (·)H denotes Hermitian transposition. the multiplication of Yi (n) by e−j2πQ(i−1)η̃Ng /N since this
Next, substituting (8) into (7) and maximizing with respect to operation only needs sign inversions and/or exchanging the
η̃, yields real and imaginary parts of Yi (n) as long as the CP length
η̂ = arg max {gJ (η̃)} (9) is multiple of N/(4Q). Similar considerations apply to the
|η̃|≤ηmax
product Yi (n) d∗i (n − Qη̃) if di (n) belongs to a BPSK
where or QPSK constellation. A certain simplification is possible
 2 when J = 1 due to the fact that Z(n, η̃) is non-zero only
1 
J
 H H −j2πQ(i−1)η̃Ng /N  when n is multiple of Q. Actually, from (15) we see that
gJ (η̃) = F (η̃) Di (η̃)Yi e 
L i=1
 evaluating g1 (η̃) requires O[2N (2L − 1)/Q] real additions
(10) plus O[4N (L − 1)/Q] real multiplications for each value of
and ηmax represents the largest expected value of |η|, which η̃.
is determined by the stability of the transmitter and receiver A reduced-complexity IFO estimator can be derived after
oscillators. After some manipulations, we may put gJ (η̃) in rewriting (11) in the equivalent form
the equivalent form  
 2 
N−1
jπm(L−1)/N

N−1
∗
gJ (η̃) = Z(n, η̃)Z (n − m, η̃)
1    
L−1 N −1 A(m)e e
j2πn/N 
gJ (η̃) =  Z(n, η̃) e  (11) m=0 n=m
L   (17)
=0 n=0
with 
with 1 m=0
J
 A(m) = 2 sin(πmL/N ) (18)
L sin(πm/N ) otherwise
Z(n, η̃) = Yi (n) d∗i (n − Qη̃)e −j2πQ(i−1)η̃Ng /N
. (12)
i=1 and letting the summation index m vary in the interval 0 ≤
In the ensuing discussion, the algorithm (9) is referred to as m ≤ M , where M < N − 1 is a properly designed parameter.
(M)
the IFO ML estimator based on the observation of J pilot This leads to the approximated ML-J (AML-J) metric gJ (η̃)
blocks (ML-J). Notice that the estimates of η and h are given in (19).
(M)
decoupled, meaning that the former can be computed first and Evaluating gJ (η̃) with J ≥ 2 requires O[N (4M + 2J −
then exploited to get the latter. Actually, an estimate of h is 3)] real additions plus O[2N (2M + 1)] real products for any
obtained setting η̃ = η̂ into (8). given η̃. For J = 1 the approximated IFO metric reduces
The accuracy of the CIR estimate can be easily assessed (M)
to g1 (η̃) expressed in (20), where we have neglected the
under the assumption η̂ = η. In such a case, after substituting term corresponding to m = 0 as it is independent of η̃. In
(5) into (8) we obtain such a case O(4N M/Q) real additions plus O(4N M/Q) real
J products are needed for each η̃. The overall complexity of
1
ĥ = h+ FH (η) DH
i (η)Wi e
−j2πQ(i−1)ηNg /N
(13) ML-J and AML-J is summarized in Tab. I. From these figures
JEB i=1 it turns out that a reduction of the computational burden is
possible with AML-J by choosing M < L − 1.
from which it follows that ĥ is unbiased with covariance
2
matrix Cĥ = σw /(JEB )IL . The trace of Cĥ gives the mean
square channel estimation error (MSCEE), which reads IV. R ELATIONSHIP WITH EXISTING IFO RECOVERY
2 SCHEMES
σw L
E{ĥ − h2 } = . (14)
JEB It is interesting to compare AML-J with other existing
If only one training block is available in each frame (J = 1), solutions. Since most IFO recovery schemes available in the
from (11) and (12) we see that the IFO metric reduces to literature exploit one or two training blocks, in the sequel we
 2 only consider the situations J = 1 and 2. Setting M = J = 1
L−1 N/Q−1  in (20) and skipping the irrelevant factor A(Q) we obtain
1    ∗

j2πnQ/N 
g1 (η̃) =  Y1 (nQ) d1 [Q(n − η̃)] e 
(1)
g1 (η̃) in (21). The latter is reminiscent of the IFO metric
L
=0  n=0 
gSY (η̃) employed by Shim, You (SY) [16] and expressed in
(15) (22) or the metric gP CH (η̃) used by Park, Cho, Hong (PCH)
having used the fact that d1 (n) = 0 when n is not multiple [14] as given in (23).
of Q. After setting η̃ = η̂ and J = 1 into (8), we obtain the A slight variation of the PCH metric has been proposed
CIR estimate ĥ() shown in (16). in [15] by Liu, Weng, Zhu (LWZ) and reads as gLW Z (η̃)
in (24). Here, â1 (nQ) is obtained by feeding the quantity
B. Reduced-complexity estimation Y1 (nQ) Y1∗ [Q(n − 1)] to a conventional threshold device,
Given the DFT outputs {Yi }Ji=1 , computing the metric which provides a decision on the differentially encoded sym-
gJ (η̃) in (11) requires O[2N (2L + J − 3)] real additions plus bol a1 (nQ) = d1 [Q(n − η)]d∗1 [Q(n − 1 − η)].
O[4N (L − 1)] real multiplications for each value of η̃. In We now turn our attention to the case J = 2. Setting M =
writing these figures we have borne in mind that a complex 0 in (19) and neglecting irrelevant terms independent of η̃,
(0)
product amounts to four real products plus two real additions, yields the IFO metric g2 (η̃) shown in (25), which has been
while a complex addition is equivalent to two real additions. employed by Morelli, D’Andrea and Mengali (MDM) in [11].
Also, in evaluating Z(n, η̃) in (12) we have not considered This scheme represents a variation of the Schmidl and Cox

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 7, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2008 5223

N/Q−1
1 
ĥ() = Y1 (nQ) d∗1 [Q(n − η̂)] ej2πQ(n−η̂)/N 0≤≤L−1 (16)
EB n=0

M
 N −1

(M)
 
jπm(L−1)/N ∗
gJ (η̃) = A(m)e e Z(n, η̃)Z (n − m, η̃) (19)
m=0 n=m

⎧ ⎫
M
 ⎨ N/Q−1
 ⎬
(M)
g1 (η̃) = A(mQ)e ejπmQ(L−1)/N Y1 (nQ) Y1∗ [Q(n − m)]d∗1 [Q(n − η̃)]d1 [Q(n − m − η̃)] (20)
⎩ ⎭
m=1 n=m

TABLE I
C OMPLEXITY OF THE IFO ESTIMATION SCHEMES .

Algorithm Real products Real additions

J =1 4N (L − 1)/Q − 2L 2N (2L − 1)/Q − 2L
ML-J
J >1 4N (L − 1) − 2L 2N (2L + J − 3) − 2L
J =1 2M (2N/Q − M ) 2M (2N/Q − M − 1)
AML-J
J >1 2N (2M + 1) − 2M 2 N (4M + 2J − 3) − 2M (M + 1)
MDM, SC, PCH, LWZ 4N/Q 4N/Q
SY 2N/Q 2N/Q

(SC) algorithm [10], which looks for the maximum of the
following metric
 
N/Q−1
 
gSC (η̃) =  Y1∗ (nQ) Y2 (nQ) d1 [Q(n − η̃)]d∗2 [Q(n − η̃)] .
 n=0
(26)
The overall operations required by the considered schemes
for each hypothesized value η̃ are summarized in Tab. I.
V. S IMULATION RESULTS
Computer simulations have been run to assess the perfor-
mance of the IFO recovery schemes illustrated in the previous
sections. The simulation model is inspired by the specifications
of the IEEE 802.11a WLAN system and is summarized as
follows.
A. Simulation model
The investigated system has N = 64 subcarriers over a
bandwidth of 20 MHz. The sampling period is Ts = 50 ns, so
that the useful part of each OFDM block has length 3.2 μs.
A CP of 0.8 μs is adopted to eliminate IBI. The discrete-time
CIR is composed by L = 10 channel coefficients. The latter
are modeled as independent circularly symmetric Gaussian
random variables with zero-mean (Rayleigh fading) and an
exponential power delay profile
 
2
E |h(k)| = λ · exp(−k) k = 0, 1, . . . , 9 (27)
where the constant λ is chosen such that the
 average
 energy
2
of the CIR is normalized to unity, i.e., E h = 1. A
channel snapshot is generated at each new simulation run and
kept fixed over an entire frame.
The pilot symbols are randomly selected at each run and be-
long to a QPSK constellation with power Pi (i = 1, 2, . . . , J).
The latter is chosen so that all training blocks have the same
average energy EB . We define the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR)
2
 as EB /(N σw ) and assume that the first pilot block is divided

into Q = 2 segments.
 The probability of failure Pf = Pr{η̂ = η} is adopted as
a performance indicator for IFO recovery while the MSCEE
is used to characterize the accuracy of the channel estimates.
Throughout simulations we let η = 2 and ηmax = 5, meaning
that η̃ ∈ {0, ±1, . . . , ±5}.
B. Performance assessment
Fig. 1 illustrates Pf vs. SNR for the IFO estimators that
employ two pilot blocks in the ideal case of perfect FFO
compensation. Parameter M for AML-2 has been fixed to
either 2 or 3, while M = 1 corresponds to the MDM scheme.
Comparisons are also made with the SC method. As expected,
the best results are obtained with ML-2, which provides the
true ML estimate of the integer CFO. The loss of AML-2
with respect to ML-2 is limited to 0.75 dB when M = 3
and increases to 2.0 dB for M = 2. Larger degradations are
observed with the MDM and SC estimators, which are more
than 5 dB far from ML-2. The results in Tab. I indicate that,
in the considered simulation set-up and for each value of η̃,
ML-2 requires approximately 4700 operations, while AML-2
needs 1200 or 1700 operations depending on whether M = 2
or 3. These figures indicate that the use of AML-2 in place
of ML-2 ensures a significant reduction of complexity at the
cost of a moderate performance loss.
Fig. 2 compares the IFO estimators when only one pilot
block is available per frame. Again, simulation results are
obtained assuming ideal FFO compensation. Although ML-1
outperforms all other schemes, the gain over AML-1 is limited
to approximately 1.5 dB when M = 1. As it can be inferred
from Tab. I, such a gain comes at the expense of a significant

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5224 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 7, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2008

⎧ ⎫
⎨ N/Q−1
 ⎬
(1)
g1 (η̃) = e ejπQ(L−1)/N Y1 (nQ) Y1∗ [Q(n − 1)]d∗1 [Q(n − η̃)]d1 [Q(n − 1 − η̃)] (21)
⎩ ⎭
n=1

⎧ ⎫
⎨N/Q−1
 ⎬
gSY (η̃) = e Y1 (nQ) Y1∗ [Q(n − 1)]d∗1 [Q(n − η̃)]d1 [Q(n − 1 − η̃)] (22)
⎩ ⎭
n=1

 
N/Q−1 
  

gP CH (η̃) =  Y1 (nQ) Y1 [Q(n − 1)]d1 [Q(n − η̃)]d1 [Q(n − 1 − η̃)]
∗ ∗
(23)
 n=1 

 
N/Q−1 
  

gLW Z (η̃) =  â1 (nQ)d1 [Q(n − η̃)]d1 [Q(n − 1 − η̃)]
∗
(24)
 n=1 

0 0
10 10
SC LWZ
MDM PCH
AML−2 (M=2) SY
−1 AML−2 (M=3) −1 AML−1 (M=1)
10 ML−2 10 AML−1 (M=3)
ML−1

−2 −2
10 10
Pf
Pf

−3 −3
10 10

−4 −4
10 10
−10 −8 −6 −4 −2 0 2 4 6 −10 −8 −6 −4 −2 0 2 4 6
SNR (dB) SNR (dB)

Fig. 1. Probability of failure vs. SNR with two blocks and ideal FFO Fig. 2. Probability of failure vs. SNR with one block and ideal FFO
compensation. compensation.

increase of the system complexity. Indeed, in the considered
simulation scenario, ML-1 needs 2300 operations for each
value η̃, while only 250 operations are required by AML-1
if M = 1. Interestingly enough, AML-1 provides much better
results than SY. This fact may appear surprising in light of
the deep similarity between the IFO metrics (21) and (22).
A possible explanation is that SY has been derived under
the assumption that the channel response is practically the
same over adjacent subcarriers, which may be questionable in
highly dispersive environments. In contrast, the exponential
term ejπQ(L−1)/N in the right-hand-side of (21) partially
compensates for the phase rotation induced by the channel
delay spread, thereby leading to improved performance with
respect to SY. Note that such a phase rotation is removed in
the metric (22) by the absolute value operation. This explain
why PCH performs better than SY at SNR values of practical
interest.
The impact of imperfect FFO compensation on the accuracy
of the IFO estimators is assessed in Figs. 3 and 4 for J = 2
and 1, respectively. In both cases, the FFO estimate is obtained
with the method described in [10] and reads
⎧ ⎫
1 ⎨ N/2−1
 ⎬
ν̂ = arg x1 (k + N/2)x∗1 (k) . (28)
π ⎩ ⎭
k=0
where x1 = [x1 (0), x1 (1), . . . , x1 (N − 1)]T collects the
time-domain samples corresponding to the first received pilot
block. From Fig. 3 we see that ML-2, AML-2 and MDM
are quite sensitive to the residual FFO Δν = ν − ν̂ and
loose approximately 4 or 5 dB with respect to the ideal case
Δν = 0. This can be explained by observing that all these
schemes employ the quantities Z(n, η̃) defined in (12), which,
in case J = Q = 2, are obtained by coherently adding the
terms Y1 (n) d∗1 (n − 2η̃) and e−j4πη̃Ng /N Y2 (n) d∗2 (n − 2η̃). In
the presence of a residual FFO, these terms are phase shifted
by a quantity Δϕ = 2πΔνNg /N and, in consequence, they
do not add up coherently to form Z(n, η̃). This leads to a
reduction of the SNR with a corresponding degradation of
the estimation accuracy. In contrast, SC exhibits a remarkable
robustness against residual FFOs. The reason is that its metric

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 7, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2008 5225

⎧ ⎫
⎨ N/Q−1
 ⎬
(0)
g2 (η̃) = e e−j2πQη̃Ng /N Y1∗ (nQ) Y2 (nQ) d1 [Q(n − η̃)]d∗2 [Q(n − η̃)] , (25)
⎩ ⎭
n=0

0 1
10 10
SC
MDM
AML−2 (M=2)
−1 AML−2 (M=3)
10 ML−2 J=1
theory
0
10

MSCEE
−2
10
Pf

−1
10
−3
10
J=2

−2
−4 10
10 −10 −8 −6 −4 −2 0 2 4 6
−10 −8 −6 −4 −2 0 2 4 6 SNR (dB)
SNR (dB)
Fig. 5. MSCEE vs. SNR with one or two blocks and non-ideal FFO
Fig. 3. Probability of failure vs. SNR with two blocks and non-ideal FFO compensation.
compensation.

0
10 Fig. 5 illustrates the accuracy of the channel estimates with
LWZ
PCH either J = 1 or 2 in case of non-ideal FFO compensation.
SY The analytical result (14) is also shown as a benchmark. As
AML−1 (M=1)
10
−1
AML−1 (M=3)
is seen, the MSCEE approaches the theoretical analysis for
ML−1 SNR> 10 dB, while a certain deviation is visible at low SNR
values. This is a consequence of the reduced accuracy of the
estimator (28).
Pf

−2
10

−3
10
10
−4
−10 −8 −6 −4 −2 0 2
SNR (dB)
Fig. 4. Probability of failure vs. SNR with one block and non-ideal FFO
compensation.
is not affected by the phase shift induced by Δν thanks to
the modulo operation employed in (26). Inspection of Fig.
3 indicates that ML-2 outperforms all other schemes and
achieves a gain of approximately 1.5 dB over SC. Larger gains
are expected at higher SNR values, where the assumption
of perfect FFO compensation is more reasonable due to the
improved accuracy of the estimate ν̂ in (28). The loss of
coherency that affects ML-2 and AML-2 when Δν = 0 should
disappear with J = 1 since in this case Z(n, η̃) reduces
to Y1 (n) d∗1 (n − 2η̃). A comparison between Figs. 2 and 4
validates this intuition and shows that all IFO estimators are
only marginally affected by the residual FFO. In such scenario,
the SNR loss is induced by ICI and is limited to a fraction of
dB.
VI. C ONCLUSIONS
We have addressed the problem of joint ML estimation of
the channel response and integer frequency offset in OFDM
systems. The solution is derived using some dedicated blocks
placed at the beginning of the data frame under the assumption
4 6
of perfect FFO compensation. To reduce the computational
burden, an approximated version of the ML estimator is also
derived. The proposed schemes exhibit improved performance
with respect to existing alternatives that estimate the IFO
without taking into account the frequency selectivity of the
transmission channel. It has been shown that approximated
ML solutions provide a means to achieve the desired trade-off
between complexity and estimation accuracy.
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