Timing and frequency synchronization for the uplink of an OFDMA system

This paper deals with timing and frequency recovery for the uplink of an orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA) system. The frequency estimator is derived from ad hoc reasoning, whereas the timing estimator is based on the maximum-likelihood criterion. Both schemes rely on the repetition of a fixed pilot symbol. Their main feature is that they provide feed-forward estimates and allow synchronization in only two OFDM blocks. In contrast to other existing methods, they do not require that the subcarriers of a given user occupy adjacent positions in the signal bandwidth. This makes it possible to interleave subcarriers of different users so as to optimally exploit the frequency diversity of the channel. Theoretical analysis and computer simulations are used to assess the performance of the proposed synchronizers. It is found that the degradations due to residual frequency and timing errors are negligible at signal-to-noise ratios of practical interest.