Journal of Engineering (JOE) 5

Vol. 1, No. 1, 2012

Copyright World Science Publisher, United States
www.worldsciencepublisher.org

Performance Analysis of Carrier Frequency Offset (CFO) in

OFDM using MATLAB

W.Aziz, 1E.Ahmed, G.Abbas, S.Saleem, Q.Islam

Department of Electrical Engineering
Institute of Space Technology, Islamabad Pakistan

Email: 1ebtisamahmed90@gmail.com

Abstract Wireless communication is the key area of research with increasing demand of high data rate applications at a
low cost. Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) is a promising solution for this problem. It is a multi
carrier modulation and as well as a multiplexing technique proposed for 3G, 4G, LTE-A systems to support high data rate
applications in a fading environment. Many problems linked with the multi carrier transmission like phase variations and
Carrier Frequency Offset (CFO) are prominent. In this paper we analyze CFO and its effect in detail for OFDM symbol and
then describe techniques to estimate CFO. The estimation techniques cover both domains; time and frequency for OFDM
system. The simulations results are analyzed and presented in this paper are performed in MATLAB.

Keywords Wireless Communication; OFDM; LTE-A; CFO; MATLAB

1. Introduction being digitized and hence digital modulation schemes are

A huge amount of development had been made in the
wireless communication systems from the many past years
and is still the vital area of research nowadays. The wireless
medium first used for the transmission of voice when
Marconi invented the radio and after that a rapid growth
had been made in this field. The reason behind we choose
wireless medium for our propagation is the mobility of the
users, which cant handled by the wired networks so
effectively. One main advantage we have the effective
transmission of data and multimedia applications like
images, video, audio files etc. on the wireless propagation
medium [1].
Long distance wireless communication requires the use of
high frequencies as low frequencies cant propagate to such
long distances and also require much large antennas.
Modulation is a scheme which finds the solution to this
problem as by modulating the low frequency baseband
signal to some high carrier frequency and facilitate the
used in recent days. Digital modulation schemes assure
robustness, solves the problem of data encryption and
security and the main thing the recovery of data at the
receiver end, which is not supported by the analog
modulation.
There are many problems associated with the carrier signal
like there might be some phase distortions due to
inaccuracies of carrier signal generation at the transmitter
and receiver ends. We can model this phase noise by a
Zero-Mean Wiener Random Process (ZMWRP). Another
common problem inherited in the carrier signal is the
carrier frequency offset (CFO) which is due to the Doppler
frequency shift with the changing velocity when passing
through the medium. This CFO also occurs due to
differences between the oscillators at the transmitter and
receiver side caused by the system noise temperature at
both respectively [3].
We can develop a relationship for the frequency offset

transfer of information. In this technique different
parameters of high frequency carrier signal is varied like
amplitude, frequency and phase etc. which gives birth to
Amplitude Modulation (AM), Frequency Modulation (FM),
Phase Modulation (PM) respectively [2]. These are analog
modulation schemes and in todays world everything is
,
by , where shows the frequency
offset and are the carrier frequencies at the
transmitter and receiver end respectively. Changing
velocity is associated with the Doppler shift. Thus the
relative velocity between transmitter and receiver dictates
the frequency shift in the carrier frequency which
W. Aziz, et al., JOE, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 5-10, 2012 6

increases with the carrier frequency as per the following

.
relation. This change in frequency causes another
issue of Carrier Frequency Offset (CFO) denoted by ;
which must be countered. Apart from the frequency offset it
also depends on frequency step size . Normalized CFO is
and here

given by: is offset in
frequency which is caused by Doppler Effect and also
caused by oscillator limitations [4].

It is necessary that the oscillator one uses for receiver

should be exactly the same but in spite of all the care taken,
the oscillator has some phase and frequency change
contributing to both STO and CFO.OFDM has a high data
rate by virtue of its orthogonal subcarriers which are spread
in some finite band. It is clear from above equations that
CFO depends on the operating frequency. Thus for a
particular band, the smaller frequencies are affected less
and the higher frequencies more. More emphasis will be put
on their effects in the material to follow.
Figure 1. Effect of IFO on OFDM Symbols
Fractional Frequency Offset
The scenario in which shift in the subcarriers is a fractional
part instead of an integer then it is called fractional carrier
frequency offset. Orthogonality can be lost among the
subcarriers which will cause ICI in return [5]. Received
signal can be expressed as:

"#$
1
2. Effects of CFO
9 ! < 5 .! .! ( )*+%2,=>3/" = 8 !
;
%&'
Normalized CFO ( ) can be broken down into Fractional
CFO ( ) which also known as FFO and into Integer CFO After taking the FFT of equation 2 we have received signal
which is affected by FFO and can be written as:
"#$

( ) which usually known as IFO [3]. Mathematically it can
9 .! <9 !( #)*+,%/"
be written as:
%&
2.1 Integer Frequency Offset (IFO) After putting the value of received signal we get the

Lets suppose we have "#$ ! transmitted symbols at

expression as given below:
%&'
the transmitter end which we intend to transmit. When
"#$ "#$
1
9 .! < < 5 @! @!( )*+2A#,=> 3%/"
passing through the channel, IFO affects OFDM symbol by
#)*+%,
the amount of ( -"
;
%& A&'
after the IFFT block. The
"#$

. ! for the ./0 subcarrierat the < 8 !( #)*+,%/"

transmitted symbol is shifted by an integer due to IFO
and results in
receiver side after N-point FFT is taken, as shown in figure %&

1. The received signal will be of the form of:

After rearranging we have left with the expression:
12 3 ( ) 52|. |" 3 7 2|. |" 3 8 2 3 "#$ "#$
1
9 .! < 5 @! @! < ( )*+2A#,=> 3%/"
8 .!
8 2 3 describes the thermal Gaussian noise and 7 2|. ;
A& %&
|" 3 represents the phase rotated version of the transmitted
symbols caused by the IFO. Then expanding the above equation and simplifying the
final expression is shown below:
We have to cater for the IFO affect, as the integer shift in
%2+> 3
subcarriers can degrade the performance of the system by 9 .! +> B ( )+> 2"#$/"3
B 5 .! B .!
" %2 - 3
"
C .! + 8 .!
increasing Bit Error Rate (BER). The IFO effect on the
OFDM symbol doesnt interrupt the orthogonality between
the subcarriers and hence ensures the absence of Inter
Carrier Interference (ICI). This is shown in figure 1.
W. Aziz, et al., JOE, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 5-10, 2012 7

%2+> 3 the ./0 subcarrier. This ICI factor can be described

+>
- 3
The term shows the effect of FFO to the
" %2 "
./0 subcarrier which results in amplitude and phase
mathematically as below:

C .!
"#$
distortion. As described earlier that ICI occurs due to FFO
DE 2F2@ . 33
subcarriers, the interference is being represented by C .! in ( )+> 2"#$3/"
< 5 @!
which can eliminate the orthogonality between the
; B DE 2F2@ . 3/;33
A&'
AG,
B @! B (
above equation and includes ICI from other subcarrier to
)+2A#,32"#$3/"3

CFO=0
1

0.5

-0.5

-1
-0.8 -0.6 -0.4 -0.2 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8
CFO=0.01
1

0.5

-0.5

-1
-1 -0.8 -0.6 -0.4 -0.2 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
CFO=0.05
1

0.5

-0.5

-1
-1 -0.8 -0.6 -0.4 -0.2 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
CFO=0.3
1

0.5

-0.5

-1
-1 -0.8 -0.6 -0.4 -0.2 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1

Figure 2. Received Signals Subject to CFO

2F -
3. CFO Estimation Techniques causes the phase distortion in the OFDM symbol which can

It is necessary to estimate the CFO, which explains

be denoted as ; where describes the CFO effect. If
we consider that channel effect is minimal and can be
distortion in the transmitted symbols and hence at the
neglected then the phase difference of the CP and the
receiver it can be compensated using some estimation
2F ;-
OFDM symbol which is the victim of CFO can be found

; 2F . Now we can find the amount of CFO

techniques [3]. There are two domains in which we can
perform the estimation of CFO effectively, usually known by
as the time and the frequency domain techniques. Now both by the multiplication of OFDM symbol (CFO affected)
will be discussed separately. with the CP and after that taking their phase angle
measurements [6]. This can be represented by the
3.1 Time Domain Estimation mathematical expression below which shows the average
value over the CP samples.
Time domain estimation proves a fruitful technique in the
#$
1
case of CFO. The use of training symbols and the cyclic
IJK L < M ! M ;!P
2F
prefix (CP) are the ways through which we can perform
time domain estimation for CFO efficiently. %&#"O

3.1.1 Cyclic Prefix

equation. As IJKfunction can be performed by the use of
The range of the CFO () can be estimated from the above

/I #$ function which has the range of F, F! in a 2F

The cyclic prefix (CP) of the OFDM symbol can be used to
estimate the CFO in time domain. We know that the CFO
W. Aziz, et al., JOE, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 5-10, 2012
of 0.5, 0.5! accordingly.
interval. This corresponds to the value of CFO in the range
the range | | S 0.5 , hence this technique is useful for the
We can conclude that the CP results the CFO estimation in
Fractional CFO (FFO) which deals with the fractional
offsets in the OFDM symbol. There is a drawback of using
CP as improves non-effective in the case of Integer CFO
(IFO), because it does not estimate integer offset.
3.1.2 Training Symbol
To overcome the issues of CP, Training Symbol (TS)
technique can be employed which covers the wide range to
estimate the value of CFO (). TS has repetitive nature with
periods of short duration, which ensures the correlation by
bringing together two sampled OFDM blocks. This will
prove helpful in increasing the range of the CFO.
Lets suppose we denote the ratio of OFDM symbol to the
repetitive length of the pattern by an integer T. Then we can
estimate the CFO by using this integer T by the following
equation:
"/ #$
T
IJK L < M ! M ;/T!P
2F
%&'
This gives an estimation range of| | S T/2, which depends
upon the controllable factor of T. As the value of T
decrease the estimation range of CFO decreases and vice
versa [7].
One main disadvantage in the case of TS is that the value of
Mean Square Error (MSE) increase as we widen our CFO
range. This is due to reduction in the correlation samples by
a factor of 1/T. The solution to this problem is to calculate
average of all the estimates over repetitive short periods
which will reduce the amount of MSE without affecting the
estimation range.
3.2 Frequency Domain Estimation
The problems faced in the time domain estimation of CFO
can be tackled well by the use frequency domain estimation
techniques. The well known technique for CFO estimation
is by pilot insertion or pilot tones.
3.2.1 Pilot Tones
In the pilot tone technique we insert some known symbols
(pilots) information in the frequency domain and then
OFDM symbols transmitted for the purpose of estimating
8
CFO. After necessary synchronization these known
symbols are extracted at the receiver end after taking FFT
[8].After this frequency domain estimation the received
signal is further compensated by using time domain
estimation techniques as described earlier.
This works well by the implementation of two different
estimation modes commonly known as the tracking and
acquisition modes. Acquisition mode estimates the Integer
CFO by enhancing the range of CFO, while tracking mode
only supports fine CFO [9]. We can estimate the acquisition
mode by the expression below:
_#$
1
W @IZ [\< 9 ] ^ E!, !9 ^ E!, !
U V
2F. T XY
&'
] ^ E! ^ E!!\`
Whereadenote the number of pilot tones,^ E! denotes the
location of the E/0 pilot tone, and ^ E! shows the pilot
tone located at^ E! in the frequency domain at the b/0
symbol period. In the same way we can develop a
mathematical expression for Fine CFO as:
1
_#$
W IJK [\< 9
2F. T XY . T
&$
] ^ E!, UW V ! 9 ^ E!, UW V !
] ^ E! ^ E!!\`
In the tracking mode we estimate the W first and then
compensate the CFO accordingly.
4. Results and Analysis
The first and foremost technique we use for
synchronization is done by exploiting the OFDM symbol;
estimate a limited CFO within the range of | | S 0.5. So,
in particular CP. But here lies the problem that it can only
training symbols are used and corresponding phase
difference in actual symbol and training symbol is
measured and hence CFO.
Now Moose model has much more range given by | | S
1- , but it can also be increased by D times, where D is the
2
number of repetitive patterns. There is the corresponding
increase in the performance which can be seen in figure 3
as BER is decreased. Now in Classen, BER is further
decreased but there is a tradeoff as with the increase in
performance complexity also increases. With CP we have
W. Aziz, et al., JOE, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 5-10, 2012 9

the least complexity as no overhead is required then the complexity is increased in Moose and Classen.

CFO Estimation
-2
10
CP-based technique
Moose (Preamble-based)
Classen (Pilot-based)

-3
10

-4
10
MSE

-5
10

-6
10

-7
10
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
SNR[dB]

Figure 3. BER performance of different CFO Estimation Techniques

5. Conclusion
OFDM is best for its higher data rates and low BER but its
implementation requires special attention. CFO and STO
estimation is the key to successful communication. Its
valid in every Communication system but OFDM is
particularly more vulnerable. Different CFO estimation
techniques are discussed in the paper along with their
merits and demerits. Moreover, this entirely depends on the
requirements and correspondingly resources are employed
to get the required performance threshold. Classen
Estimation technique is much more efficient and shown in
the paper to work better.
[3] Yong Soo Cho, Jaekwon Kim, Won Young Yang, Chung-Gu Kang,
MIMO-OFDM Wireless Communication with MATLAB, John Wiley &
Sons (Asia), Singapore, 2010.
[4] Jun Wu, Qun Zhou and K.K.M.Cheng, A Joint Estimation Algorithm
of Symbol Timing and Carrier Offset in OFDM Systems, Vehicular
Technology Conference, 2001. Vol 1, pp 712-716.
[5] S. Younis, A. Al-Dweik, C. C. Tsimenidis, B. S. Sharif and A. Hazmi,
The Effect of Timing Errors on Frequency Offset Estimation in OFDM
Systems, International Symposium on Signal Processing and Information
Technology (ISSPIT), 2011, pp. 202-206.
[6] Sankassa B. Senevirathna, Chandimal Jayawardena, Sumudu S. Perera,
Chandima L. Perera, Dhanushka Ranasignhe, Sureni R. Wijerathna ,
Thisara N. Bandara, Carrier Frequency Offset Estimation for OFDM
System using Extended Kalman Filter, 4th International Conference on
Information and Automation for Sustainability, 2008, pp. 351-354.

[7] Yuefen Chen, Frequency offset estimation based on virtual carrier in

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W. Aziz, et al., JOE, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 5-10, 2012 10

Vitae Pakistan. He has published more that 19 International Journal and 5

International Conference papers. His areas of interest are Channel
Estimation and Detection, Wireless Communication, DSP algorithms,
Ebtisam Ahmed, Waqar Aziz, Ghulam Abbas, are students of B.E Spectrum Sensing etc.
Electrical Engineering at Institute of Space Technology, Islamabad,
Pakistan. Currently they are working on their Final Year Project Design Dr.Qamar-ul-Islam is with Department of Communication System
and Implementation of MIMO-OFDM System using USRP. They have Engineering at Institute of Space Technology, Islamabad, Pakistan. He is
already published 3 International Journal Papers from their work related to
currently Head of Department. His areas of interest are Estimation and
Final Year Project.
Detection Theory, Wireless Communication and Satellite Communication.
Saqib Saleem is currently working as a Lecturer in Department of
Electrical Engineering at Institute of Space Technology, Islamabad,