A new data rotation based CP synchronization scheme for OFDM systems

In this paper, a new data rotation scheme for improving the symbol timing and carrier frequency offset (CFO) estimation of orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) systems is proposed. The new data rotation scheme intentionally introduces a cyclic shift after the inverse fast Fourier transform (IFFT) in the transmitter so that a higher energy cyclic prefix (CP) is obtained. This cyclic shift will not impair the orthogonality among the subcarriers and will only results in phase shift in the demodulated signal at the receiver. To recover the cyclic shift and for data detection, the scheme makes use of double differential encoding and decoding at the transmitter and the receiver. We analyze the performance of the new data rotation scheme by using order statistics theory. Our results show that the new scheme can provide a 1.6 dB gain in the performance of the CFO estimator and a 6 dB gain for the timing estimator at 15 dB SNR over AWGN channel, as well as a 6 dB gain in lock-in probability and a 4 dB gain in CFO performance at 5 dB SNR over frequency selective fading channel.