An efficient carrier frequency offset estimate for MIMO-OFDM in LTE system

The problem of pilot assisted carrier frequency offset (CFO) estimation in LTE system is investigated in this paper. Since both the pilot design and the number of pilot symbols are already fixed in LTE technical standards, it is proposed to employ multiple successive pilot symbols to improve the CFO estimation performance under the LTE standard constraints. We firstly present the generalized CRLB (GCRLB) analysis based on multiple successive pilot symbols. It is revealed that, better CFO estimate can be achieved by jointly using multiple successive pilot symbols than by using only one pilot symbol. The enhanced maximum likelihood (ML) carrier frequency offset estimate problem is formulated and simulation results are presented to validate that the proposed CFO estimate scheme offers an effective mechanism to improve the CFO estimate in practical LTE system.