Analysis of the uplink of an asynchronous multi-user DMT OFDMA system impaired by time offsets, frequency offsets, and multi-path fading

We study through analysis the joint effect of time offsets, frequency offsets, and multi-path fading in the uplink of an asynchronous multi-user system for wireless communications deploying discrete multi-tone modulation and demodulation. We derive analytical expressions for the multiple access interference, and we quantify its detrimental effects through the evaluation of both the average SINR, and the symbol-error-rate performance. As a result it is shown that the MAI strongly depends not only on the aforementioned impairments but also on the tone assignment algorithm used to multiplex the users. Based on our analysis, the insertion of appropriate time and frequency guard intervals and the accurate selection of the tone assignment algorithm effectively reduce the MAI, so that a proper trade off with spectral efficiency can be met to optimize system performance.