Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is very sensitive to the frequency errors caused by phase noise and Doppler shift. These errors will disturb the orthogonality among subcarriers and cause intercarrier interference (ICI). A simple method to combat ICI is proposed in this letter. The main idea is to map each data symbol onto a couple of subcarriers rather to a single subcarrier. Different from the conventional adjacent coupling and symmetric coupling methods, the frequency diversity can be utilized more efficiently by the proposed adaptive coupling method based on optimal subcarrier spacing. Numerical results show that our proposed method provides a robust signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) improvement over the conventional coupling methods.

For advanced mobile communication systems that adopt orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA) technologies, intercarrier interference (ICI) significantly degrades performance when mobility is high. Standard specifications and concerns about complexity demand low-cost methods with deployment readiness and decent performance. In this paper, novel zero forcing (ZF) and minimum mean-square error (MMSE) equalizers based on per-subcarrier adaptive (PSA) processing and perturbation-based (PB) approximation are introduced. The proposed equalizers strike a good balance between implementation cost and performance; therefore they are especially suitable for OFDMA downlink receivers. Theoretical analysis and simulations are provided to verify our claims.

Similar to orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) systems, orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA) is vulnerable to carrier frequency offset (CFO). Since the CFO of each user is different, CFO compensation in OFDMA uplink is much more involved than that in OFDM systems. It has been shown that the zero-forcing (ZF) compensation method is a simple yet effective remedy; however, it requires the inversion of a large matrix and the computational complexity can be very high. Recently, we have developed a low-complexity iterative method to alleviate this problem. In this paper, we consider the theoretical aspect of the algorithm. We specifically analyze the output signal-to-interference-plus-noise-ratio (SINR) of the algorithm. Two approaches are used for the analysis; one is simple but approximated, and the other is complicated but exact. The convergence problem is also discussed. In addition to the analysis, we propose a pre-compensation (PC) method enhancing the performance of the algorithm. Simulations show that our analysis is accurate and the PC method is effective.

We develop a maximum likelihood estimation scheme for correcting the carrier frequency offsets prior to the general intercarrier interference (ICI) self-cancellation in the OFDM systems. Since the same data symbols employed for ICI self-cancellation are also used for frequency offset estimation, the proposed scheme does not consume additional bandwidth. The combined use of the estimation algorithm and ICI self-cancellation scheme provides both frequency offset compensation and ICI reduction hence improves the system performance greatly. The effectiveness of the proposed estimation-cancellation scheme is further verified by calculating the bit error rates of various OFDM receivers, and substantial improvements are found.

In this letter, we propose a partial minimum mean-squared error (MMSE) with successive interference cancellation (PMMSESIC) method in frequency domain to mitigate ICI caused by channel variation. Each detection, the proposed method detects the symbol with the largest received signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) among all the undetected symbols, using an MMSE detector that considers only the interference of several neithborhood subcarriers. Analysis and simulations show that it outperforms the MMSE method at relatively high Eb/N0 and its performance is close to the MMSE with successive detection (MMSESD) method in relatively low Doppler frequency region.

A new data-aided carrier frequency offset (CFO) estimation technique is presented for correlative coded OFDM systems in the presence of strong multipath. Different from traditional data-aided estimation techniques, the technique estimates CFO by detecting amplitude of pilots rather than their phase shift and removes effects on CFO estimation due to intercarrier interference by an iterative compensation method. A theoretical analysis of its performance has been derived and simulation results comparing the new technique with a traditional data-aided estimation technique are presented.