Variable guard interval orthogonal frequency division multiplexing in presence of carrier frequency offset

The goal of this paper is to highlight the benefits of using variable guard interval (VGI) in orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) based wireless local area network (WLAN) systems. An algorithm is derived and its performance merit for implementing VGI in the presence of carrier frequency offset is provided. OFDM system needs to maintain orthogonality among sub carriers, which may be lost due insufficient guard interval and carrier frequency offset (due to local oscillator mismatch and Doppler effects). Static guard interval is usually kept large enough to tolerate worst case channel delay spread conditions, which in turn causes loss in efficiency of the system. The use of variable guard interval is expected to improve the system throughput. Since insufficient guard interval and carrier offset together cause orthogonality loss among sub carriers, the dynamic selection of guard interval in the presence of carrier frequency offset is considered in this work. Results are presented to analyze achievable gains. It has been shown that significant improvement in throughput is achievable by this scheme.