Blind estimation of symbol timing and carrier frequency offset in wirelessOFDM systems

Orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) systems are highly sensit ive to synchronization errors. In this paper, we introduce an algorithm for the blind estimation of symbol timing and carrier frequency offset in wire less OFDM systems, The proposed estimator is an extension of the Gini-Giann akis estimator for single-carrier systems. It exploits the cyclostationarit y of OFDM signals and relies on second-order statistics only, Our method fa n be applied to pulse shaping OFDM systems with arbitrary time-frequency gu ard regions, OFDM based on offset quadrature amplitude modulation, and bior thogonal frequency-division multiplexing systems. We furthermore propose th e use of different subcarrier transmit powers (subcarrier weighting) and pe riodic transmitter preceding to achieve a carrier frequency acquisition ran ge of the entire bandwidth of the OFDM signal, and a symbol timing acquisit ion range of arbitrary length, Finally, we provide simulation results demon strating the performance of the new estimator.