MER performance analysis of M-QAM-OFDM with Wiener phase noise

The orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) technology has been proposed as the standard for broadcasting both audio and video digital signals and for wide-band wireless communication systems (e.g., WLAN). However, the performance of the OFDM scheme is severely affected by the phase noise of the oscillators at the receiver. The modulation error rate (MER) is widely applied as a measure of OFDM signals' performance which integrates impairments such as nonlinearity, IQ imbalance, phase noise as well as doppler frequency shift. In this paper, we investigate the effects induced on the OFDM signals by Wiener phase noise, and propose analytical equations for MER calculation. Theoretical results show perfect agreement with those obtained by simulation and they can be used to predict the MER degradation of OFDM system and choose suitable oscillators with no need to run extensive simulations.