The effect of carrier frequency offset on the performance of band limited single carrier and OFDM signals

In this contribution, the bit error rate (BER) degradation caused by a carrier frequency offset between the transmitter and receiver carrier oscillator is investigated for single carrier (SC) and multi carrier (OFDM) signaling. For both modulation formats a carrier frequency offset results in a rotation and an attenuation of the transmitted symbols. In addition, this impairment gives rise to inter-symbol interference (ISI) and destroys the orthogonality between the carriers of the multi carrier signal which yields inter-carrier interference (ICI). The analysis shows that for SC transmission the BER degradation is dominated by the reduction of the useful signal component, provided that the carrier frequency offset is small with respect to the SC symbol rate. For OFDM transmission, a comparison of the different interferences reveals that the BER degradation is determined by the ICI.