On Time-Variant Distortions in Multicarrier Transmission with Application to Frequency Offsets and Phase Noise

TL;DR

This paper introduces a generalized framework to predict multicarrier system performance under time-variant distortions like phase noise and frequency offsets, applicable to various schemes including OFDM, with improved bounds and exact formulas.

Contribution

The authors develop a comprehensive prediction framework for multicarrier systems affected by time-variant distortions, extending beyond OFDM to more general schemes.

Findings

Derived improved performance bounds for OFDM under frequency offset and phase noise.

Obtained exact formulas for average performance in AWGN and multipath channels.

Demonstrated the framework's applicability to general multicarrier schemes.

Abstract

Phase noise and frequency offsets are due to their time-variant behavior one of the most limiting disturbances in practical OFDM designs and therefore intensively studied by many authors. In this paper we present a generalized framework for the prediction of uncoded system performance in the presence of time-variant distortions including the transmitter and receiver pulse shapes as well as the channel. Therefore, unlike existing studies, our approach can be employed for more general multicarrier schemes. To show the usefulness of our approach, we apply the results to OFDM in the context of frequency offset and Wiener phase noise, yielding improved bounds on the uncoded performance. In particular, we obtain exact formulas for the averaged performance in AWGN and time-invariant multipath channels.