Time and Frequency Synchronization with Channel Estimation for SC-FDMA Systems Over Time-Varying Channels

The constant amplitude zero autocorrelation sequence based synchronization and its usage in the block-type channel estimation for the single carrier frequency division multiple access (SC-FDMA) systems are vulnerable to the time-varying channels. Therefore, the channel estimation errors limit the performance of SC-FDMA systems in fast fading environments and result an irreducible error floor. In this paper, cyclic prefix based maximum likelihood estimator of time/frequency synchronization with comb-type channel estimation for the SC-FDMA systems are proposed to track the channel variations. Moreover, the residual time/frequency offsets calculations are derived for SC-FDMA systems. Simulation results confirm and illustrate that the proposed receiver is capable of tracking fast fading channel parameters and improving the overall performance as compared with the conventional receiver.