In this letter, a method estimating the intercell carrier frequency-offset (CFO) in orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM)-based cellular systems is proposed for the user's equipment (UE), especially at the cell boundary, in downlink channels. After describing a new method of deriving the intercell CFO from the signals received by adjacent base stations (BSs), we propose a cell-searching method using the estimated CFOs. It is shown by computer simulation that the proposed methods can uniquely estimate the intercell CFOs and identify the target BS with a high detection probability at the UE.

This paper proposes a novel synchronization method of jointly estimating symbol frame timing and carrier frequency-offset for Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) signal operating in the burst mode which is usually employed in the wireless LAN communications systems. The proposed method enables a fast and accurate synchronization for the burst mode OFDM signal even under the presence of large frequency-offset, very low C/N and frequency selective fading environments by using only two preamble symbols inserted at the start of every burst frame. This paper presents the various computer simulation results to verify the performance of proposed synchronization methods both for symbol timing and carrier frequency.