On the Joint Estimation of Phase Noise and Time-Varying Channels for OFDM under High-Mobility Conditions

Abstract: The combination of the effects of Doppler frequency shifts (due to mobility) and phase noise (due to the imperfections of oscillators operating at a high carrier frequency) poses serious challenges to Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) wireless transmissions in terms of channel estimation and phase noise tracking performance and the associated pilot overhead required for that estimation and tracking. In this paper, we use separate sets of Basis Expansion Model (BEM) coefficients for modelling the time variation over intervals of several OFDM symbols of the channel paths and the phase noise process. Based on this model, an efficient solution approximating the maximum-likelihood joint estimation of these BEM coefficients is derived and shown to outperform state-of-the-art phase noise compensation methods