Multiple Frequency Offset Estimation for the Downlink of Coordinated MIMO Systems

We consider downlink MIMO beamforming from several coordinated basestations (BSs), and the associated problem of in dependent carrier frequency offsets (CFOs) at the BSs which cause accumulated phase errors to compromise beamforming accuracy. Correction of the CFOs requires estimation of their values, so our topic is multiple CFO estimation, a little-explored area. We present a robust and easily generalized estimator that accounts for the training sequence (TS) correlations caused by the CFOs, and show that it meets the Cramer-Rao lower bound (CRLB) at moderate signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs). The performance of the estimator is contingent upon TSs short enough to ensure convexity of the log-likelihood over the allowable CFO ranges. For combinations of TS length and CFO range that violate this constraint, we present two suboptimal estimators based on segmentation of the TS, both of which also meet the CRLB at moderate to high SNRs.