Blind Feedforward Frequency Estimation for OFDM Signals Transmitted over Multipath Fading Channels

This paper provides an approximate closed form solution to the problem of maximum likelihood (ML) estimation of the carrier frequency offset (CFO) in an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) signal transmitted over a multipath fading channel. This results in a novel feedforward frequency synchronizer, requiring only an approximate statistical knowledge of the communication channel. The performance of the proposed algorithm is assessed by computer simulations and is compared with that provided by other synchronizers and with Cramer-Rao bounds.