Particle filter with ant colony optimization for frequency offset estimation in OFDM systems with unknown noise distribution

ABSTRACTWhile inter-symbol interference is not of concern, inter-carrier interference that is caused by carrier frequency offset (CFO) is more concerned in orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems. The estimation of channel impulse response (CIR) is another important parameter of interest in the system. Recently, a number of approaches for the joint estimation of CFO and CIR in OFDM systems have been proposed in the literature, and most of them are traditional maximum-likelihood-based approaches. In this paper, we propose a number of mixture cost-reference particle filtering (CRPF) approaches for joint estimation of CIR and CFO, and a couple of them can be applied without the knowledge of both state and measurement noise statistics. Conventional least mean squares algorithm or recursive least squares algorithm is jointly employed with recently developed CRPF for nonlinear and multiple parameters estimation in OFDM systems. The computer simulation results show that mixture CRPFs are more robust against particle impoverishment (PI) problem than standard mixture particle filtering (PF) and mixture regularized PF (RPF) approaches although RPF was particularly developed to tackle the PI problem. In this paper, we investigate a number of mixture PF approaches including ones that do not need the information of noise statistics for the joint estimation of CFO and channel in OFDM systems.

In orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) systems, it is generally assumed that the channel response is static in an OFDM symbol period. However, the assumption does not hold in high-mobility environments. As a result, intercarrier interference (ICI) is induced and the system performance is degraded. A simple remedy for this problem is the application of the zero-forcing (ZF) and minimum mean square error (MMSE) equalizers. Unfortunately, the direct ZF method requires the inversion of an NxN ICI matrix, where N is the number of subcarriers. When N is large, the computational complexity can become prohibitively high. As for the direct MMSE method, in addition to an NxN matrix inverse, it requires an extra NxN matrix multiplication, making the required computational complexity higher compared to the direct ZF method. In this dissertation, we first propose a low-complexity ZF method to solve the problem in single-input-single-output (SISO) OFDM systems. The main idea is to explore the special structure inherent in the ICI matrix and to apply Newton's iteration for matrix inversion. With our formulation, fast Fourier transforms (FFTs) can be used in the iterative process, reducing the complexity from O(N^3) to O(Nlog_2 N) . Also, the required number of the iteration is typically one or two. We also analyze the convergence behavior of the proposed method and derive the theoretical output signal-to-interference-noise-ratio (SINR). For the MMSE method, we first reformulate the MMSE solution in a way that the extra matrix multiplication can be avoided. Similar to the ZF method, we then exploit the structure of the ICI matrix and apply Newton's iteration to reduce the complexity of the matrix inversion. For a multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) OFDM system, the required complexity of the ZF and MMSE methods becomes more intractable. We then manage to extend the proposed ZF and MMSE methods for SISO-OFDM systems to MIMO-OFDM systems. It turns out that the computational complexity can be reduced even more significantly. Simulation results show that the performance of the proposed methods is almost as good as that of the direct ZF and MMSE methods, while the required computational complexity is reduced dramatically. Finally, we explore the application of the proposed methods in mobility-induced ICI mitigation for OFDM multiple access (OFDMA) systems, and in carrier frequency offset (CFO) induced ICI mitigation for OFDMA uplink systems. As that in OFDM systems, the proposed methods can reduce the required computational complexity, effectively.

A bstract—To overcome the inter-carrier interference (ICI) of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems due to the carrier frequency offset (CFO), an ICA-based carrier synchronization method is proposed. Independent component analysis (ICA) is also known as blind source separation (BSS), which depends on the independence of source signals to separate or extract latent signals of interest. In this paper, we build an analogous ICA model for OFDM systems with the CFO. By virtue of this model, the ICA technique can be utilized to compensate corresponding loss of performance due to imperfect CFO estimation in the conventional method. Theoretical analysis shows that the ICA-based carrier synchronization method not only has maximum likelihood (ML) source recovery ability, but also can improve signal to noise ratio (SNR) of OFDM systems. Simulation results demonstrate the validity of the proposed method.

The paper proposes a new iterative method to estimate the carrier frequency offset (CFO) with scattered pilot symbols inserted for channel estimation in orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems. Assuming that the channel remains constant during a few consecutive OFDM blocks, the new method uses the correlations of the pilot symbols in these consecutive OFDM blocks. And an iterative concept is also employed to reduce the inter-carrier interference (ICI) that deteriorates the CFO estimation performance. After a few iterations, the proposed method can achieve the accuracy with no ICI. The mean square error (MSE) of the new method is analyzed and simulation results show the new method outperforms existing methods.

Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) has become one of the promising technologies for the next-generation communication systems to support high-data-rate transmission. However, conventional OFDM systems are sensitive to both the carrier frequency offset (CFO) and the in-phase and quadrature (IQ) imbalance, which cause the inter-carrier interference (ICI) and greatly degrade the performance. In this paper, we propose a novel OFDM system using a permutated on-off-keying quadrature-phase-shift-keying (OOK-QPSK) modulation to reduce the ICI. The performance analysis and the simulation results show the proposed OFDM system performs better than conventional OFDM systems using QPSK modulation under the impact of both the CFO and the IQ imbalance.

Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is a method suitable for high-rate data transmission in wireline and wireless communications. However, it is very sensitive to frequency offset due to Doppler shifts and carrier synchronization errors. This frequency offset results in inter-carrier interference (ICI) and, as a result, the performance of the OFDM system degrades drastically. Consequently, it, is necessary to remove as many ICI effects as possible to achieve the desired OFDM system performance. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a new method based on a nonlinear adaptive filter to suppress these ICI effects. In addition to showing that the ICI effects can be reduced significantly, the results also demonstrate that the nonlinear filter scheme is superior to the conventional linear filter.

Performance of both orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) and single carrier (SC) systems suffers from a carrier frequency offset (CFO) due to Doppler effect and the carrier instability between the transmitter and the receiver. We investigate the bit error rate (BER) performance degradation of OFDM and SC systems due to the frequency offset in an additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel as well as multipath Rayleigh fading channels. We consider three effects to the BER degradation, i.e., phase shift, useful power decrease and intercarrier interference (ICI). We also derive the approximate expressions of BER under binary phase shift keying (BPSK) and quaternary phase shift keying (QPSK) for both OFDM and SC systems in the presence of CFO. In general, SC is more robust to CFO in the AVVGN channel than OFDM in terms of BER, while both of them suffer similarly from CFO in the multipath Rayleigh fading channels assuming the the same CFO.

The performance of Link Adaptation (LA) under the influence of inter carrier interference (ICI), which is cause by carrier frequency offset (CFO) and Doppler frequency spread due to mobility, in orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) based wireless systems is analyzed in this work. LA maximizes throughput while maintaining a target bit error rate (BER) or Block Error Rate (BLER) at the receiver using the signal to noise ratio (SNR) fed back from the receiver to the transmitter. Since ICI power is proportional to the signal strength, the implications of such an impairment on LA OFDM systems is not obvious and has not received much attention till now. It is seen that when ICI is not captured in the SNR measured then the LA system fails to meet the target error rate. However, it is shown that with suitable modification to the SNR switching threshold for changing the adaptive modulation can over the problem. It is also noted that ICI severely reduces the spectral efficiency of OFDM systems even when LA is used.

Channel estimation and synchronization are considered the most challenging issues in Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) system. OFDM is highly affected by synchronization errors that cause reduction in subcarriers orthogonality, leading to significant performance degradation. The synchronization errors cause two issues: Symbol Time Offset (STO), which produces inter symbol interference (ISI) and Carrier Frequency Offset (CFO), which results in inter carrier interference (ICI). The aim of the research is to simulate Comb type pilot based channel estimation for OFDM system showing the effect of pilot numbers on the channel estimation performance and propose a modified estimation method for STO with less number of pilot to mitigate ISI effect. Channel estimation is simulated for different pilot number with 16QAM modulation in Ped-A Rayleigh channel. The STO effect assumed less than the cyclic prefix length to minimize ISI and maintain the orthogonality between subcarriers. The simulation results show that the high number of pilots are needed to achieve good channel estimation in case no synchronization used while similar results are achieved with smaller number of pilots if the propose modification on the synchronization method are used aligned with the channel estimation. The proposed system is evaluated in terms of BER and SNR.

Blind carrier frequency offset estimation in OFDM systems with I/Q imbalance

Low cost video sensors used for streaming video signals to help firefighters, require high bit rate due to uncompressed images. To increase spectral efficiency given a limited bandwidth, very high order constellations in high signal to noise ratio regimes can be used. However, noise is not the only factor effecting the high order constellations. These constellations are also sensitive to hardware impairments and system non‐linearities. Therefore, in this paper, the effect of carrier frequency offset (CFO) on the performance of an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) system with high order quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) is studied. A closed form expression is derived for the maximum normalized residual CFO that an OFDM system with M ‐QAM constellation can resist to have an error free symbol detection. Finally, the suitability of common previous CFO estimation techniques such as the cyclic prefix based technique and the Moose technique in these systems are investigate. The results show that the maximum residual CFO that an OFDM system with M ‐QAM constellation can resist is proportional to the inverse of . The results also show that very large order QAM constellations such as 4096‐QAM are very sensitive to even small residual CFO values and their performance degrades, significantly. However, the bit error rate analysis indicate that the Moose CFO estimation technique can be used in these systems to compensate the CFO effect, accurately.

It is well known that Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) systems suffer from intercarrier interference (ICI) in mobile environment due to loss of orthogonality among subcarriers caused by Doppler shifts. There exist many ICI mitigation techniques in the literature to improve the performance of OFDM systems. However, most of the existing ICI mitigation techniques assume the OFDM transmission bandwidth is narrow enough that the frequency offsets on all subcarriers are identical. In a wideband OFDM transmission or a non-contiguous OFDM spanning over large bandwidth, the Doppler shifts on different subcarriers are different, especially in high speed aerial vehicle communication systems. In this paper, we analyze the wideband OFDM system in high mobility environment where the frequency offsets vary from subcarrier to subcarrier. We then propose a novel ICI cancellation scheme to eliminate the ICI effect and offer the wideband OFDM system significantly improved BER performance. Simulation results in AWGN channel and multipath fading channel confirm the effectiveness of the proposed scheme in the presence of frequency offset and time variations in the channel, offering the best BER performance available which matches the BER performance of wideband OFDM system without ICI. To our knowledge, this paper is the first to address the ICI problem of varying frequency offsets across subcarriers in wideband OFDM system.

Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems work well if the subcarriers are orthogonal to each other. However, the orthogonality among subcarriers may not exist and result in inter-carrier interference (ICI) at the receiver. This may cause by residual carrier frequency offset, time variations due to Doppler shift or phase noise. Further developing the parallel cancellation (PC) scheme to mitigate the ICI of OFDM systems, we expand this OFDM symbol-based PC scheme into a space-frequency (SF) coded system. This new simple space- frequency parallel cancellation (SFPC) scheme is a technique that combines the SF and PC schemes together. Computer simulations indicate that OFDM systems using the SFPC scheme outperform the regular PC and SF systems in slow and fast frequency selective fading channels, specifically at a high signal-noise-ratio (SNR). Furthermore, the error floor of the SFPC-OFDM system is significantly lower than that of the PC and SF systems without increasing computational load. Additionally, the SFPC scheme is a simple multiple input and multiple output (MIMO) system.

In orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems, most of the conventional sampling frequency offset (SFO) estimation methods work under the assumption of time-invariant or slow time-variant channels. In mobile environment, the time-variant channel significantly degrades the accuracy of SFO estimation. To solve the problem, we first analyze the properties of time-variant channels. If terminal moves within some tens of the wavelength of radio frequency (RF) signal, channel path delay almost remains unchanged. For most practical OFDM systems, our analysis indicates that channel path delay can be regarded as unchanged during the interval of some tens of OFDM symbols in time-variant channels. Based on the analysis, we propose a novel SFO estimation method for pilot-aided OFDM systems. Different from the conventional methods, the proposed method estimates SFO by detecting the variation of the symbol timing error caused by SFO. The detection is finished by implementing correlation between the channel impulse responses (CIRs) estimated by different OFDM symbols. Performance of the proposed method is simulated and compared with that of two conventional post-FFT methods. Numerical results show that, the proposed SFO estimation method performs better than the conventional methods not only in time-variant channels, but also at low SNRs and large residual carrier frequency offsets (CFOs).

Recently, Chi and Chen et al. proposed a subcarrier averaging based blind beamforming framework for a multiuser orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) system, which can work well in block fading channels and achieve full multipath diversity gain by maximal ratio combining. However, when the channel is not static in an OFDM block or the frequency synchronization is not accurate, the basic assumption of “block fading” for the above blind beamforming framework will not be valid. In this paper, the decorrelation character of multiuser OFDM system with carrier frequency offsets (CFOs) based on subcarrier averaging is firstly proved. Thereby, the subcarrier averaging based blind beamforming method can be applied to extract each path signal. In order to reduce the effects of CFOs, a blind equalizer in frequency domain is further proposed to equalize inter-carrier interference (ICI). Simulations verify the effectiveness of the proposed blind receiver structure with CFOs, even in the fast fading channels with doppler frequency shifts <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">1</sup> .