Phase noise modelling and mitigation techniques in OFDM communications systems

This paper addresses the analysis and mitigation of the signal distortion caused by oscillator phase noise (PN) in OFDM communications systems. Two new PN mitigation techniques are proposed, especially targeted for reducing the intercarrier interference (ICI) effects due to PN. The first proposed method is a fairly simple one, stemming from the idea of linearly interpolating between two consecutive common phase error (CPE) estimates to obtain a linearized estimate of the time-varying phase characteristics. The second technique, in turn, is an extension to the existing state-of-the-art ICI estimation methods. Here the idea is to use an additional interpolation stage to improve the phase estimation performance around the boundaries of two consecutive OFDM symbols. The paper also verifies the performance improvement of these new PN estimation techniques by comparing them to the existing state-of-the-art techniques using extensive computer simulations. To emphasize practicality, the simulations are carried out in 3GPPLTE downlink –like system context, covering both additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) and extended ITU-R Vehicular A multipath channel types.