2436
7, JULY 2008
ML Joint CFO and Channel Estimation in
OFDM Systems with Timing Ambiguity
Jianwu Chen, Yik-Chung Wu, Shaodan Ma, and Tung-Sang Ng, Fellow, IEEE
Abstract—This letter addresses the problem of joint estimation
of carrier frequency offset (CFO) and channel for OFDM systems
in the presence of timing ambiguity. Based on two signal models
for quasi-synchronized OFDM systems, two joint CFO and
channel estimators are derived from the Maximum Likelihood
(ML) criterion. The first estimator obtained is a joint estimator
for all unknown parameters, which needs a multi-dimensional
search. The second estimator has a reduced complexity, but
its performance slightly degrades compared with the first one.
Through MSE analyses, we find that when the number of
subcarriers is large, the two estimators are equivalent.
Index Terms—Carrier frequency offset (CFO), channel estima-
tion, Cramér-Rao bound, maximum likelihood (ML), orthogonal
frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM).
I. I NTRODUCTION
O RTHOGONAL frequency division multiplexing
(OFDM) systems are sensitive to the carrier frequency
offset (CFO) caused by mismatch of the local oscillator
in transceivers and Doppler shifts due to mobility. The
inter-carrier interference (ICI) induced by CFO destroys
the orthogonality between subcarriers and causes significant
performance degradation, so it is critical to estimate the
CFO at the receiver and compensate its effects. Moreover, in
order to achieve simple coherent equalization, which is one
of the dominant advantages of OFDM technique, accurate
estimation of the channel is usually required.
Generally, the CFO and channel estimation are treated
separately with the aid of different pilots [1]-[2]. In order to
save bandwidth, blind and semiblind approaches exploiting
the inherent structure of the received OFDM signal gain
some interests [3]. However, since the blind schemes typically
require observation over a large number of OFDM symbols,
they are not suitable for packet-based transmission where CFO
is changing packet by packet. As an efficient method with
reduced training overhead, joint CFO and channel estimation
schemes based on common pilots are highlighted in [4]-[6].
For systems with embedded training, an iterative algorithm is
proposed to jointly estimate the CFO and channel based on the
pilot tones in [4]. For block training, the optimal pilot designs
for both CFO and channel estimation are investigated in [5]
using the worst-case asymptotic Cramér-Rao bound (CRB).
Based on one kind of the optimal pilots presented in [5], a
Manuscript received January 10, 2007; revised May 23, 2007; accepted
August 30, 2007. The associate editor coordinating the review of this letter
and approving it for publication was G. Vitetta. This work was supported by
grant HKU7168/03E from the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong.
The authors are with the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engi-
neering, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong (e-mail: {jwchen, ycwu,
sdma, tsng}@eee.hku.hk).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TWC.2008.070026.
1536-1276/07$25.00 
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 7, NO.
null-space based joint CFO and channel estimator is proposed
by Zeng et al. [6] (referred as ZJCCE in the following).
It is noticed that perfect time synchronization is always
assumed in these joint CFO and channel estimation schemes
[4]-[6], but such an assumption is too restrictive in practice.
Since the metrics for many existing timing synchronization
algorithms have a plateau in the presence of frequency selec-
tive fading channel ([7], [8] and [9]), perfect time synchro-
nization is difficult to achieve. Up to now, how the existing
joint CFO and channel estimators behave in the presence of
timing ambiguity is still unclear. As an initial work, in [10],
an improved timing robust version of the null-space based
estimation scheme in [6] is recently proposed using an ad
hoc argument. Unfortunately, that work provides little insights
into the effects of timing ambiguity on a general joint CFO
and channel estimation case. Motivated by this, the letter
first introduces two signal models with timing ambiguity:
one uses an explicit matrix to represent the effects of timing
offset and the other one embeds the timing offset in the
channel. Then two ML estimators for joint CFO and channel
estimation are derived and analyzed based on the two signal
models respectively. For the first estimator, a two dimensional
search is needed to obtain the optimal estimates since the
timing offset and CFO are coupled with each other. For
the second signal model, two dimensional search is avoided,
however, as more unknown parameters need to be estimated,
slight performance degradation occurs. Further mathematical
analyses show that the degradation vanishes as the number of
subcarriers increases. Note that the seemingly related scheme
proposed in [11] for DS-CDMA is not applicable to the
problem under consideration since it is based on an assumption
that the effects of CFO within one block of data can be simply
approximated as a scalar, which is not valid in OFDM systems.
II. S YSTEM D ESCRIPTION
A packet-based OFDM system with N subcarriers is con-
sidered. For each data packet, it is preceded by some training
blocks as shown in Fig. 1. It is assumed that timing synchro-
nization will be completed by exploiting the training blocks at
the beginning of the preamble (Part 1). The CFO and channel
estimation tasks will be carried out on the second portion of
the preamble which consists of only one OFDM block (Part 2).
Similar training structures have been proposed in many OFDM
based standards, such as IEEE802.11a and HiperLAN2.
At the transmitter, the frequency domain signal in one
OFDM block d = [d(0), d(1), . . . , d(N − 1)]T is first mod-
ulated onto different subcarriers. The corresponding time-
domain vector s is given by s = FH d, where F is the
j2πkl
FFT matrix with F(k, l) = √1N e− N . A cyclic prefix
c 2008 IEEE
 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 7, NO. 7, JULY 2008
Fig. 1. The packet structure for OFDM systems.
(CP) of length Lcp is inserted ahead of s to cope with the
inter-symbol interference (ISI) caused by multipath fading.
The channel impulse response (including all transmit/receive
filtering effects) is denoted as h = [h0 , . . . , hL−1 ]T , and
is quasi-static over one data packet. The CP length Lcp is
assumed to be larger than the channel order L. The normalized
CFO between the transmitter and receiver is assumed to be
εo . At the receiver, a correlation-based timing synchronization
scheme is used (e.g. [7] [8]), such that the ISI-free region for
the subsequent OFDM symbols can be located. Defining the
sample indexes of a perfectly synchronized OFDM block as
[−Lcp , . . . , 0, . . . , N −1], the estimated starting position of the
FFT window can be regarded in the range [−(Lcp − L), 0].
In the following, we denote the timing offset between the
estimated starting position of the FFT window and the perfect
timing point as θo . After CP removal, the received signal
vector x, which consists of N consecutive samples, is given
by
x = Γ(ωo )A(θo )h + v (1)
where ωo  2πεo /N ; Γ(ωo )  diag(1, . . . , e(j(N −1)ωo ) );
A(θo )  T(θo )FH DFL with FL = F(:, 0 : L − 1);
T(θo )  [eθo +1 , . . . , eN , e1 , . . . , eθo ] with ei = IN ×N (:
, i); D  diag(d(0), d(1), . . . , d(N − 1)); and vector v 
[v0 , v1 , . . . , vN −1 ]T denotes the complex white Gaussian noise
with zero mean and covariance matrix Cv = E{vvH } =
σ 2 IN ×N . MATLAB notations are used throughout the paper.
Equivalently, we can rewrite the above system model as
[11]:
x = Γ(ωo )Bξ + v (2)
where B  FH DFLcp ; ξ  [0Tθo ×1 hT 0T(Lcp −θo −L)×1 ]T .
The difference between (1) and (2) lies in the way how the
timing ambiguity is presented. In the first model the timing
ambiguity θo is shown in A(θo ) explicitly, while in the second
one the timing ambiguity is embedded in the channel response
ξ.
III. ML E STIMATORS W ITH O PTIMAL T RAINING
With the signal models (1) and (2) in Section II, two ML
estimation schemes are derived in this section. To achieve the
best estimation performance, the optimal training sequence
is considered. As pointed out by [5], the optimal training
sequence d for joint CFO and channel estimation should be an
orthogonal sequence and also meet FH H
L D DFL = Es IL×L ,
where Es is the power of training symbols. Without loss of
generality, we assume the pilot has unit power (Es = 1). It is
noticed that the orthogonal sequence with constant-modulus
(i.e., DH D = IN ×N ) is one subclass of the above optimal
training sequence. Hereafter, this kind of sequence is assumed
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2437
in the estimation. This assumption is not restrictive since many
practical sequences possess these properties.
A. ML Estimator for Signal Model (1)
Based on the signal model in (1), the ML estimates of
parameters {h, ωo , θo } is given by minimizing
Λ1 (x; h̃, ω̃, θ̃) = [x − Γ(ω̃)A(θ̃)h̃]H [x − Γ(ω̃)A(θ̃)h̃] (3)
where h̃, ω̃ and θ̃ are trial values of h, ωo and θo . Due to
the linearity of parameter h in (1), the least square estimate
(also ML estimate in this case) for h (when ω̃ and θ̃ are fixed)
is ĥ = (FH H
L D DFL )
−1
(Γ(ω̃)A(θ̃))H x = (Γ(ω̃)A(θ̃))H x.
Substituting this result into (3), and dropping the irrelevant
terms, the ML estimator for ωo and θo is given by
[ω̂, θ̂] = arg max{J1 (ω̃, θ̃)  AH (θ̃)ΓH (ω̃)x2 }. (4)
ω̃,θ̃
In the above estimation scheme, the channel h, CFO ωo
and timing offset θo need to be jointly estimated, so in the
following, we will refer this estimator as joint timing, CFO and
channel estimator (JTCCE). Notice that the ZJCCE scheme in
[6] can be regarded as a special case of the JTCCE derived
here when θo = 0 (i.e., no timing offset).
B. ML Estimator for Signal Model (2)
With the signal model in (2), the estimates of parameters
{ξ, ωo } is given by minimizing
Λ2 (x; ξ̃, ω̃) = [x − Γ(ω̃)Bξ̃]H [x − Γ(ω̃)Bξ̃] (5)
where ξ̃ is the trial value of ξ. With DH D = IN ×N , it is easy
to check that BH B = ILcp ×Lcp . Then the estimate for ξ can
be obtained as ξ̂ = (BH B)−1 (Γ(ω̃)B)H x = BH ΓH (ω̃)x.
Substituting this result into (5), the ML estimator for ωo is
ω̂ = arg max{J2 (ω̃)  BH ΓH (ω̃)x2 }. (6)
ω̃
In the above estimation scheme, the timing offset is embed-
ded in the channel, so two dimensional search scheme like that
of (4) is avoided. Since the timing ambiguity θ̃ is an integer
in the region [−(Lcp − L), 0], it is clear that the complexity
for this estimator is Lcp − L times lower than that of JTCCE.
In the following, we will refer this estimator as joint CFO and
channel estimator (JCCE). It is also noticed that (6) coincides
with the ad hoc based timing robust CFO estimator in [10].
C. Relationship Between JTCCE and JCCE
Denoting C(θ̃) = diag(1, . . . , e(j2π(N −1)θ̃/N ) ), it is easy
to check that FTH (θ̃) = C(θ̃)F. Putting this result into (4),
we have
J1 (ω̃, θ̃) = FH H H H
L D FT (θ̃)Γ (ω̃)x
2
= FH H H
L C(θ̃)D FΓ (ω̃)x
2
= FH (:, θ̃ : θ̃ + L − 1)DH FΓH (ω̃)x2 . (7)
On the other hand, from (6), we can obtain
J2 (ω̃) = FH (:, 0 : Lcp − 1)DH FΓH (ω̃)x2 . (8)
 2438 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 7, NO. 7, JULY 2008

where F⊥ L = F(:, L : N − 1) is the null space of

FL . Substituting the signal model (1) in (10), we have
f1 (ω̃, θ̃) = (F⊥ H H H 2
L ) D FT (θ̃)Γ(Δ)A(θo )h + n1  , where
Δ = ωo − ω̃ is the error of CFO estimation; and n1 =
(F⊥ H H H
L ) D FT (θ̃)Γ(ω̃)v is a noise vector having the co-
variance matrix Cn1 = E{n1 nH 2
1 } = σ I(N −L)×(N −L) .
Since generally Δ is small, with the Taylor series ex-
pansion, Γ(Δ) can be approximated as Γ(Δ) ≈ IN ×N +
jMΔ with M = diag(0, . . . , N − 1). Using this re-
sult, we have f1 (ω̃, θ̃) ≈ G1 (θ̃)h + K1 (θ̃)hΔ + n1 2 ,
where G1 (θ̃) = (F⊥ H H H
L ) D FT (θ̃)A(θo ) and K1 (θ̃) =
⊥ H H H
j(FL ) D FT (θ̃)MA(θo ). For a given estimate of timing
θ̃ = θ̂ and a realization of h, the estimation problem in (10)
Fig. 2. Physical meanings for the two proposed estimators JTCCE (maxi-
mizing (7)) and JCCE (maximizing (8)). is equivalent to Δ = arg min{G1 (θ̂)h + K1 (θ̂)hΔ + n1 2 }.
Δ
The solution to this equivalent problem can be obtained by
differentiating G1 (θ̂)h + K1 (θ̂)hΔ + n1 2 with respect to
Denoting h̄ = FH DH FΓH (ω̃)x and assuming the esti- Δ and setting the result to zero (details omitted). Using the
mated CFO is perfect (ω̃ = ωo ), we have the following resultant Δ, the MSE can be approximated as
equation by using the signal model (1):
N2
h̄ = FH DH FΓH (ωo )x MSE1 (h, θ̂) = · En1 {Δ2 }
4π 2
= FH C(θo )DH FFH DFL h + FH DH FΓH (ωo )v N2 
≈ · 2hH KH 2
1 (θ̂)K1 (θ̂)hσ +
= [0Tθo ×1 hT 0T(N −θo −L)×1 ]T + FH DH FΓH (ωo )v. (9) 4π 2 · 4(hH KH 1 (θ̂)K1 (θ̂)h)
2

It is noticed that in the absence of CFO, h̄ can be regarded (hH KH1 ( θ̂)G 1 (θ̂)h + hH H
G 1 (θ̂)K 1 (θ̂)h)2

as a shifted time domain channel vector. Graphically, h̄ (11)

consists of three parts as shown in Fig. 2. The two separate We will show by simulation in the next section that when
shaded areas consist of noise samples only and the blank block SNR is high enough the proposed JTCCE can always achieve
is the shifted time domain channel plus noise. the perfect timing estimation (θ̂ = θo ), so the MSE perfor-
Comparing h̄ in (9) with (7) and (8), it is clear that mance of CFO estimation in this scheme can be approximated
maximizing (7) is equivalent to locating the position of a by MSE1 (h, θo ). For ZJCCE scheme, since perfect timing is
window of length L (shown as the trial window for JTCCE always assumed (θ̂ = 0), the performance can be numerically
in Fig. 2) and finding an ω̃ such that the energy within the calculated by MSE1 (h, 0).
window is maximized; while maximizing (8) is to find an ω̃ Due to the highly non-linear nature of the parameter θo in
such that the energy within the window from 0 to Lcp (shown the signal model (1), it is very difficult to derive the exact CRB
as the trial window for JCCE in Fig. 2) is maximized. In some for the joint estimation in (4). To give a lower bound of the
sense, the JCCE is an approximation to JTCCE by using a CFO estimation, the conditional Cramér-Rao bound (CCRB)
larger window during frequency estimation. Of course, using a with perfectly known θo is given by [12]
window larger than L would cause degradation in performance
since more noise is included in the observation. However, we N2
CCRB1 (h, θo ) = ·
will show in the next section that the performance loss is 4π 2
negligible when the number of subcarriers N is large. σ2
.
Remark: In the proposed schemes, by using a pseudorandom 2(hH AH (θo )M(I − A(θo )AH (θo ))MA(θo )h)
training sequence, the acquisition range of CFO estimation (12)
is [−N/2, N/2]. This range is considered large compared to For JTCCE, it is possible that the timing offset estimation
other existing schemes such as [1] and [7]. is not perfect, then the performance of CFO estimation will
degrade since some extra noise areas will be included in the
IV. P ERFORMANCE A NALYSES CFO estimation as depicted in Fig. 2. However, the above
In the following, the performances of the above two ML CCRB is still a valid lower bound.
estimators are analyzed. Since the performance of the con-
sidered system is mainly determined by the accuracy of CFO B. Performance of the JCCE
estimation, only the performance of the CFO estimation is The equivalent estimator of (6) can be written as
analyzed.
ω̂ = arg min{f2 (ω̃)  (F⊥ H H H 2
Lcp ) D FΓ (ω̃)x } (13)
ω̃
A. Performance of the JTCCE where F⊥Lcp = F(:, Lcp : N − 1) is the null space of FLcp .
The equivalent estimator of (4) can be written as By following a similar procedure for deriving (11), the MSE
[ω̂, θ̂] = performance of the estimator in (13) can be approximated as
arg min{f1 (ω̃, θ̃)  (F⊥ H H H H 2 N2 N2 σ2
L ) D FT (θ̃)Γ (ω̃)x } (10) MSE2 (h) = · E{Δ2 } ≈ · H H (14)
ω̃,θ̃ 4π 2 2
4π 2h K2 K2 h

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 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 7, NO. 7, JULY 2008 2439

1
ZJCCE (simulated)
−2 ZJCCE (theoretical)
10
f(δ)

0.5 SNR = 20 dB JTCCE (theoretical)

JTCCE CCRB
−3
JTCCE (simulated)
0 10

MSE of CFO estimation

−7 −6 −5 −4 −3 −2 −1 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 JCCE (theoretical)
JCCE CRB
1
JCCE (simulated)
−4
10
f(δ)

0.5 SNR = 30 dB

−5
0 10
−7 −6 −5 −4 −3 −2 −1 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
1
−6
10
f(δ)

0.5 SNR = 40 dB
−7
10
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40
−7 −6 −5 −4 −3 −2 −1 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 SNR(dB)
δ(samples)
Fig. 4. The MSE performance of the CFO estimation with timing error.
Fig. 3. The pdf for the error of timing estimation in JTCCE.

parameters: N = 64, Lcp = 16, which are consistent with the

where K2 = j(F⊥ H H
Lcp ) D FMA(θo ). WLAN standard. The second part of the preamble section is
With the signal model in (2), the CRB for JCCE is given constructed by a Chu-sequence [13]. 5 data OFDM blocks are
by [12] sent after the preamble in each packet with 16QAM modula-
N2 σ2 tion. A multipath Rayleigh fading channel with eight sample-
CRB2 (ξ) = · . (15) spaced taps and exponential power delay profile (normalized
4π 2 2(ξH BH M(I − BBH )MBξ)
to unit power) is considered. Without loss of generality, the
C. Comparison normalized CFO for each packet εo is generated as a random
variable uniformly distributed in [−0.5, 0.5] and it is assumed
Though it is shown graphically in Section III that the JCCE
that the timing estimate is uniformly distributed in the range
is an approximation of JTCCE, it is more meaningful to
[−(Lcp − L), 0]. All results are averaged over 10000 Monte
quantitatively compare the performance of the two estimators.
Carlo runs.
Denoting the ratio of the MSE performance between JCCE
In Fig. 3, the probability density function (pdf) of the
and JTCCE as r, and applying the result in (11) and (14), the
following equation is obtained: estimation error of time offset in JTCCE is shown, where
δ = θo − θ̂ is measured in simulation. It can be seen that
MSE2 (h) at different SNRs of interest, the JTCCE has a very large
r=
MSE1 (h, θo ) possibility of identifying the correct timing point. Therefore,
hH KH
1 (θo )K1 (θo )h we can set θ̂ = θo for MSE1 (h, θ̂) to obtain the approximated
= MSE performance for JTCCE.
hH KH 2 K2 h
FH (:, L : Lcp − 1)DH FMFH DFL h2 In Fig. 4, the MSE performances of the CFO estimation
=1+ . (16) in JTCCE, JCCE and ZJCCE are plotted versus SNR. The
FH (:, Lcp : N − 1)DH FMFH DFL h2
theoretical curves and lower bounds are obtained by numer-
In the above equation, the derivation from the first step to the ically averaging the results in (11), (14), (12) and (15) over
second step is based on the fact that hH KH 1 (θo )G1 (θo )h + channel realizations. It is apparent that the results of analyses
hH GH 1 (θo )K1 (θo )h = 0. It is noticed that r in the above match the simulations very well. Furthermore, the JCCE and
equation is only determined by a power ratio between two JTCCE can approach their lower bounds respectively and only
projections of a common vector onto different subspaces of a marginal performance gap between the two schemes can
F. For practical systems with a large number of subcarriers, be observed. It is also noticed that in the considered system,
the dimension of F(:, L : Lcp − 1) is much smaller than the ZJCCE scheme degrades a lot compared with JCCE and
that of F(:, Lcp : N − 1), so for this case the second term JTCCE, especially in high SNR range where a MSE floor
in (16) approaches zero. Then, the following result can be occurs.
N →∞
obtained: r −−−−→ 1. It means that the JCCE is asymptotically Next, in Fig. 5, the number of subcarriers is varied from
equivalent to the JTCCE for systems with a large number of 32 to 1024 (SNR=20dB) to show the effects of the training
subcarriers. OFDM block length on the proposed CFO estimators. It is
found that the performance gap between JCCE and JTCCE
V. S IMULATION R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSIONS decreases when the number of subcarrier increases. When the
In this section, simulation results are presented to demon- number of subcarriers is larger than 128, there is no noticeable
strate the effectiveness of the proposed schemes. In all sim- difference between the two estimators, thus corroborating our
ulations, the considered OFDM system has the following theoretical result that the two estimators are asymptotically

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 2440 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 7, NO. 7, JULY 2008

−2
10
ZJCCE
Furthermore, although theoretically, JCCE suffers loss respect
JCCE to JTCCE, but in terms of SER performance, JCCE performs
JTCCE the same as JTCCE. This makes JCCE very attractive as there
CCRB for JTCCE
−3
10 is no need to deal with timing ambiguity explicitly. For the
ZJCCE scheme, a poorer SER performance compared with
MSE of CFO estimation

JTCCE and JCCE over the whole SNR range is observed.

−4
VI. C ONCLUSION
10
In this letter, based on two different signal models, two
ML estimators for joint CFO and channel estimation un-
−5
der timing ambiguity have been derived. The first estimator
10
jointly estimates the timing offset, CFO and channel, but
the complexity is high due to the need of two dimensional
search. The second one has a lower complexity compared
−6
10 with the first one, but requires more unknown parameters
to be estimated resulting in slight performance degradation.
1 2 3 4
10 10 10 10
Number of Subcarriers N
Through mathematical analyses and comparisons, it has been
Fig. 5. The MSE performance of the CFO estimation vs. the number of shown that the two estimators are asymptotically equivalent
subcarriers. when the number of subcarriers is large. This makes the
0
second estimator very attractive in practice.
10
ZJCCE
JCCE
JTCCE
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10
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