Frequency Offset Estimation in 3G LTE

Abstract

3G Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology aims at addressing the increasing demand for mobile multimedia services in high user density areas while maintaining good performance in extreme channel conditions such as high mobility of High Speed Trains. This paper focuses on the latter aspect and compares different algorithms for the uplink frequency offset estimation in LTE Base Stations (eNodeB). A frequency-domain maximum-likelihood based solution is proposed, taking profit of the available interference-free OFDM symbols de-mapped (or de-multiplexed) at the output of the FFT of an OFDMA multi-user receiver. It is shown to outperform the state-of-the-art CP correlation approach on both link-level performance and complexity aspects.