A Technique for Frequency Synchronization in Multi-Band OFDM in Realistic UWB Channel

This paper presents a highly accurate frequency offset estimation algorithm for multi-band orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (MB-OFDM) systems effective for realistic ultra-wideband (UWB) environment. The proposed algorithm derives its estimates based on phase differences in the received subcarrier signals of several successive OFDM symbols in the preamble. We consider different carrier frequency offsets and different channel responses in different bands to keep the analysis and simulation compatible for practical multi-band UWB scenario. Performance of the proposed algorithm is studied by means of bit error rate (BER) performance of MB-OFDM system. In order to compare the variance of the synchronizer to that of the theoretical optimum, we derive the Cramer–Rao lower bound (CRLB) of the estimation error variance and compare it with the simulated error variance both in additive white Gaussian noise and UWB channel model (CM) environments, CM1–CM4. Next, we modify the estimation algorithm by proposing a multi-band averaging frequency offset synchronization (MBAFS) scheme. We establish superior BER performance with MBAFS compared to our first scheme. We calculate modified CRLB for MBAFS and compare it with simulation results for CM1–CM4. Both analysis and simulation show that MBAFS algorithm can estimate the carrier frequency offset effectively and precisely in UWB fading channels for MB-OFDM applications. We also analyze the computational complexity of both the proposed algorithms in order to verify their feasibility of implementation in practical UWB receiver design.