Doppler Spread Estimation for Broadband Wireless OFDM Systems

In this paper, we present a new Doppler spread estimation algorithm for broadband wireless orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems with time-varying and frequency-selective Rayleigh fading. The algorithm is developed by analyzing the statistical properties of the power of received signals in the time domain, thus it excludes the influence of inter- carrier interference introduced by channel variation within one OFDM symbol. The operation of the algorithm doesn't require the knowledge of fading coefficients, transmitted data symbols, or signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). It works well under time-selective and frequency-selective Rayleigh fading channel with SNR as low as 0 dB. Moreover, unlike existing algorithms, the proposed algorithm takes into considerations of the discrete-time channel inter-tap correlation, as the case in practical systems. Simulation results demonstrate that this new algorithm can accurately estimate a wide range of Doppler spread with low estimation latency and high computational efficiency.