Sensitivity of orthogonal frequency-division multiplexed systems to carrier and clock synchronization errors

In this contribution, we present an overview of research results pertaining to the sensitivity of orthogonal frequency-division multiplexed (OFDM) systems to synchronization errors. We show that OFDM systems are quite sensitive to carrier frequency offset and clock frequency offset: in the presence of these impairments, the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) at the input of the decision device is a decreasing function of the number of carriers. On the other hand, carrier phase jitter and timing jitter give rise to a degradation of the SNR at the input of the decision device which does not depend on the number of carriers; as compared to traditional single-carrier systems, OFDM systems have the same sensitivity to carrier phase jitter and a somewhat larger sensitivity to timing jitter. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.