Properties of the intercarrier interference due to phase noise in OFDM

We present a unified analysis of intercarrier interference (ICI) which is caused by phase noise in OFDM. The "small" phase noise approximation known from the literature is dropped and analysis applies to a general phase noise model. The power of intercarrier interference is calculated in two ways, namely using an integral form and using an ICI correlation matrix which we also derive. As two special cases, the Wiener and Orastein-Uhlenbeck phase noise models, which are typical for free-running and PLL synthesizer realizations of the local oscillator, respectively, are presented. Closed form expressions of the respective powers are calculated. We show that these theoretical considerations fit well to numerical experiments. The calculated ICI distribution show that ICI cannot be approximated by a Gaussian random variable for a wide range of phase noise strengths contradicting the usual assumptions on the ICI.