Design of a Blind Estimation Technique of Carrier Frequency Offset for a Universal-Filtered Multi-Carrier System Over Rayleigh Fading

This letter proposes a blind and simple estimation technique of carrier frequency offset (CFO) for a universal-filtered multi-carrier (UFMC) system under specified carrier assignment. The estimation design is divided into a fractional part and an integer part. In particular, by utilizing the characteristic of auto-correlation functions, the proposed scheme only needs a single UFMC symbol and a few complex multiplications to achieve fractional CFO estimation. Furthermore, the integer CFO is selected from the admissible candidates that minimize the frequency response of the frequency-compensated signal corresponding to the specified null subcarriers. The proposed CFO estimation does not require the aid of pilot symbols, and is easy to implement. Its achievable performance is quantified by our derived closed-form expression of the mean-square error of the proposed fractional CFO estimation. The computer simulation results verify the effectiveness and reliability of the proposed approach that does not require an exhaustive frequency search method.