An improved differential correlation based integer frequency offset estimation method for OFDM signals

Differential correlation has been widely used technique to estimate integer frequency offset (IFO) in orthogonal frequency division multiplexed (OFDM) systems. In the literature some authors use two preambles while the others use one preamble for this purpose. Differential correlation approach using one preamble only exploits the correlation among adjacent subcarriers. In this paper we propose an extended differential correlation approach using one preamble. The proposed method not only uses the correlation between adjacent subcarriers but also uses the correlation between non adjacent subcarriers. The performance of the proposed IFO estimation approach is compared with the existing IFO estimation approaches.