Carrier frequency offset estimation for multiuser MIMO OFDM uplink using CAZAC sequences : performance and sequence optimization

This paper studies carrier frequency offset (CFO) estimation in the uplink of multi-user multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems. Conventional maximum likelihood estimator requires computational complexity that increases exponentially with the number of users. To reduce the complexity, we propose a sub-optimal estimation algorithm using constant amplitude zero autocorrelation (CAZAC) training sequences. The complexity of the proposed algorithm increases only linearly with the number of users. In this algorithm, the different CFOs from different users destroy the orthogonality among training sequences and introduce multiple access interference (MAI), which causes an irreducible error floor in the CFO estimation. To reduce the effect of the MAI, we find the CAZAC sequence that maximizes the signal to interference ratio (SIR). The optimal training sequence is dependent on the CFOs of all users, which are unknown. To solve this problem, we propose a new cost function which closely approximates the SIR-based cost function for small CFO values and is independent of the actual CFOs. Computer simulations show that the error floor in the CFO estimation can be significantly reduced by using the optimal sequences found with the new cost function compared to a randomly chosen CAZAC sequence.