COMMON PHASE ERROR DUE TO PHASE NOISE IN OFDM
- ESTIMATION AND SUPPRESSION
Denis Petrovic, Wolfgang Rave and Gerhard Fettweis
Vodafone Chair for Mobile Communications, Dresden University of Technology, Helmholtzstrasse 18, Dresden, Germany
{petrovic,rave,fettweis}@ifn.et.tu-dresden.de
Abstract - Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing
(OFDM) has already become a very attractive modulation
scheme for many applications. Unfortunately OFDM is very
sensitive to synchronization errors, one of them being phase
noise, which is of great importance in modern WLAN
systems which target high data rates and tend to use higher
frequency bands because of the spectrum availability. In
this paper we propose a linear Kalman filter as a means
for tracking phase noise and its suppression. The algorithm
is pilot based. The performance of the proposed method is
investigated and compared with the performance of other
known algorithms.
Keywords - OFDM, Synchronization, Phase noise, WLAN
I. I NTRODUCTION
OFDM has been applied in a variety of digital commu-
nications applications. It has been deployed in both wired
systems (xDSL) and wireless LANs (IEEE802.11a). This is
mainly due to the robustness to frequency selective fading.
The basic principle of OFDM is to split a high data
rate data stream into a number of lower rate streams which
are transmitted simultaneously over a number of orthogonal
subcarriers. However this most valuable feature, namely
orthogonality between the carriers, is threatened by the
presence of phase noise in oscillators. This is especially the
case, if bandwidth efficient higher order modulations need
to be employed or if the spacing between the carriers is to
be reduced.
To compensate for phase noise several methods have been
proposed. These can be divided into time domain [1][2] and
frequency domain approaches [3][4][5]. In this paper we
propose an algorithm for tracking the average phase noise
offset also known as the common phase error (CPE)[6] in the
frequency domain using a linear Kalman filter. Note that CPE
estimation should be considered as a first step within more
sophisticated algorithms for phase noise suppression [5]
which attempt to suppress also the intercarrier interference
(ICI) due to phase noise. CPE compensation only, can
however suffice for some system design scenarios to suppress
phase noise to a satisfactory level. For these two reasons we
consider CPE estimation as an important step for phase noise
suppression.
II. S YSTEM M ODEL
An OFDM transmission system in the presence of phase
noise is shown in Fig. 1. Since all phase noise sources
can be mapped to the receiver side [7] we assume, without
loss of generality that phase noise is present only at the
front end of the receiver. Assuming perfect frequency and
timing synchronization the received OFDM signal samples,
sampled at frequency fs , in the presence of phase noise can
be expressed as r(n) = (x(n) ? h(n))ejφ(n) + ξ(n). Each
OFDM symbol is assumed to consist of a cyclic prefix of
length NCP samples and N samples corresponding to the
useful signal. The variables x(n), h(n) and φ(n) denote
the samples of the transmitted signal, the channel impulse
response and the phase noise process at the output of the
mixer, respectively. The symbol ? stands for convolution.
The term ξ(n) represents AWGN noise with variance σn2 .
The phase noise process φ(t) is modelled as a Wiener
process [8], the details of which are given below, with a
certain 3dB bandwidth ∆f3dB .
OFDM Modulator Upconversion
X m,l l = 0,1,2...N -1
IFFT CP LPF
x (t )
x( n) = x( nTs )
e − j 2π fct Channel
fs
e − ( j 2π fct −φ (t ))
Rm ,l l = 0,1, 2...N -1
FFT CP
r (n) = r (nTs ) r (t ) = [ x(t ) ∗ h(t ) ] e jφ (t )
OFDM Demodulator Downconversion
Fig. 1
Block diagram of an OFDM transmission chain.
At the receiver after removing the NCP samples cor-
responding to the cyclic prefix and taking the discrete
Fourier transform (DFT) on the remaining N samples, the
demodulated carrier amplitude Rm,lk at subcarrier lk (lk =
0, 1, ...N − 1) of the mth OFDM symbol is given as [4]:
Rm,lk = Xm,lk Hm,lk Im (0) + ζm,lk + ηm,lk (1)
where Xm,lk , Hm,lk and ηm,lk represent the transmitted
symbol on subcarrier lk , the channel transfer function and
linearly transformed AWGN with unchanged variance σn2
at subcarrier lk , respectively. The term ζm,lk represents
intercarrier interference (ICI) due to phase noise and was
shown to be a gaussian distributed, zero mean, random
∆f3dB
variable with variance σICI2
= πN3f [7].
s
The term Im (0) also stems from phase noise. It does not
depend on the subcarrier index and modifies all subcarriers
of one OFDM symbol in the same manner. As its modulus is
in addition very close to one [9], it can be seen as a symbol
rotation in the complex plane. Thus it is referred to in the
literature as the common phase error (CPE) [6].
The constellation rotation due to CPE causes unaccept-
able system performance [7]. Acceptable performance can
be achieved if one estimates Im (0) or its argument and
compensates the effect of the CPE by derotating the received
subcarrier symbols in the frequency domain (see Eq. (1)),
which significantly reduces the error rate as compared to the
case where no compensation is used. The problem of esti-
mating the CPE was addressed by several authors [3][4][10].
In [3] the authors concentrated on estimating the argument
of Im (0) using a simple averaging over pilots. In [10] the
argument of Im (0) was estimated using an extended Kalman
filter, while in [4] the coefficient Im (0) itself was estimated
using the LS algorithm. Here we introduce an alternative
way for minimum mean square estimation (MMSE)[11] of
Im (0) using a linear scalar Kalman filter. The algorithm is
as [4] pilot based.
III. P HASE N OISE M ODEL
For our purposes we need to consider a discretized phase
noise model φ(n) = φ(nTs ) where n ∈ N0 and Ts = 1/fs
is the sampling period at the front end of the receiver.
We adopt a Brownian motion model of the phase noise
[8]. The samples
√ of the phase noise process are given as
φ(n) = 2πfc cB(n) where fc is the carrier frequency,
c = ∆f3dB /πfc2 [8] and B(n) represents the discretizied
Brownian motion process,
Using properties of the Brownian motion [12] the fol-
lowing holds: B(0) = 0 and B(n + 1) = B(n) + dBn ,
n ∈ N0 where each increment √ dBn is an independent
random variable and dBn ∼ T N
√ (0, 1).
s
Noting that φ(n) = 2πfc cB(n) we can write the
discrete time phase noise process equation as
φ(n + 1) = φ(n) + w(n)
where w(n) ∼ N (0, 4π 2 fc2 cTs ) is a gaussian random
2 Step 1: Initialization
variable with zero mean and variance σw = 4π 2 fc2 cTs .
IV. CPE E STIMATION U SING A K ALMAN F ILTER
Since all received subcarriers within one OFDM symbol
are affected by the same factor, namely Im (0), the problem
at hand can be seen as an example of estimating a constant
from several noisy measurements given by Eq. (1) for which
purpose a Kalman filter is well suited [11]. For a Kalman
filter to be used we need to define the state space model of
the system.
Define first the set L = {l1 , l2 , l3 , ...lP } as a subset of the
subcarrier set {0, 1, ...N − 1}. Using Eq. (1) one can write
Rm,lk = Am,lk Im,lk (0) + εm,lk (3)
where Am,lk = Xm,lk Hm,lk and Im,lk (0) = Im (0) for all
k = 1, 2 . . . , P . Additional indexing of the CPE terms is
done here only for convenience of notation.
On the other hand one can write
Im,lk+1 (0) = Im,lk (0). (4)
Equations (3) and (4) are the measurement and process
equation of the system state space model, where Am,lk
represents the measurement matrix, while the process matrix
is equal to 1 and Im,lk (0) corresponds to the state of
the system. The measuring noise is given by εm,lk which
combines the ICI and AWGN terms in Eq. (1), the variance
of which for all lk equals σε2 = (σICI 2
+ σn2 ). The process
noise equals zero. Note that the defined state space model
is valid only for one OFDM symbol.
For the state space model to be fully defined, knowledge
of the Am,lk = Xm,lk Hm,lk is needed. Here we assume
to have ideal knowledge of the channel. On the other hand
we define the subset L to correspond to the pilot subcarrier
locations within one OFDM symbol so that Xm,q , q ∈ L are
also known.
We assume that at the beginning of each burst perfect
timing and frequency synchronization is achieved, so that
the phase error at the beginning of the burst equals zero.
After the burst reception and demodulation, the demodulated
symbols are one by one passed to the Kalman filter.
For a Kalman filter initialization one needs for each
OFDM symbol an a priori value for Iˆm,l1 (0) and an a
priori error variance Km,1 −
. At the beginning of the burst,
when m = 1, it is reasonable to adopt Iˆ1,l −
(0) = 1. Within
1
th
each OFDM symbol, say m , the filter uses P received
pilot subcarriers to recursively update the a priori value
Iˆm,l
−1
(0). After all P pilot subcarriers are taken into account
ˆ
1
Im,lP (0) is obtained, which is adopted as an estimate of
the CPE within one OFDM symbol, denoted as Iˆm (0). The
Kalman filter also provides an error variance of the estimate
of Im,lP (0) as Km,P . Iˆm,lP (0) and Km,P are then used as
(2) a priori measures for the next OFDM symbol.
The detailed structure of the algorithm is as follows.
Iˆm,l
−
1
(0) = E{Im,l
−
1
(0)} = Iˆm−1 (0)
K − = E{|Im (0) − Iˆm−1 (0)|2 }
m,1
∼
= E{|φm − φ̂m−1 |2 } = σCP
2
E + Km−1,P
 
2N 2 +1
2
where σCP E = 4π + NCP ∆ff3dB (see [10]),
3N s
K0,P = 0 and φm = arg{Im (0)}.
Repeat Step 2 and Step 3 for k = 1, 2, . . . , P estimator from [4] and our approach for two channel types
Step 2: a-posteriori estimation (update) and both standard correction and using decision feedback.
H Note that SNRs are chosen such that the BER of a coded
Km,k
−
Hm,l
Gm,k = k
system after the Viterbi algorithm in case of phase noise free
Hm,lk Km,k Hm,lH + (σ 2 2
ICI + σn )
−
k transmission is around 1 · 10−4 .
Iˆm,lk (0) = Iˆm,l
−
k
(0) + Gm,k [Rm,lk − Hm,lk Iˆm,l
−
k
(0)] Kalman filter shows better performance in all cases and
Km,k = (1 − Gm,k Hm,lk )Km,k − seems to be more effective for small phase noise bandwidths.
As expected when DF is used the MSE of an estimator
Step 3: State and error variance propagation is smaller because we are taking more measurements into
Km,k+1
−
= Km,k (5) account.

Iˆ−
(0) = Iˆm,l (0)
m,lk +1 k
-2
10
Note that no matrix inversions are required, since the state
SNR = 22dB KF
space model is purely scalar. 64-QAM
AWGN Wu et al.
V. CPE C ORRECTION
The easiest approach for CPE correction is to derotate
all subcarriers lk of the received mth symbol Rm,lk by

MSE
10
-3 w/o DF
φm = − arg{Iˆm (0)}. Unambiguity of the arg{·} function
plays here no role since any unambiguity which is a multiple
of 2π rotates the constellation to its equivalent position in
terms of its argument.
The presented Kalman filter estimation algorithm is read- with DF
ily applicable for the decision feedback (DF) type of algo- 10
-4

rithm presented in [4]. The idea there was to use the data 100
10 800
symbols demodulated after the first CPE correction in a DFE Phase noise bandwidth ∆ f3dB
manner to improve the quality of the estimate since that is
increasing the number of observations of the quantity we Fig. 2
want to estimate. In our case that would mean that after MSE of an estimator for AWGN channel.
the first CPE correction the set L = {l1 , l2 , l3 , ...lP } of
the subcarriers used for CPE estimation, which previously
corresponded to pilot subcarriers, is now extended to a larger
set corresponding to all or some of the demodulated symbols.
In this paper we have extended the set to all demodulated -2
10
symbols. The Kalman filter estimation is then applied in an
SNR = 36dB
unchanged form for a larger set L. 64-QAM
Frequecy selective channel: ETSI A Channel
-3
10
VI. N UMERICAL R ESULTS
w/o DF
The performance of the proposed algorithm is investigated
MSE

and compared with the proposal of [4] which is shown -4

10
to outperform other known approaches. The system model
is according to the IEEE802.11a standard, where 64-QAM with DF
modulation is used. We investigate the performance in -5
10
AWGN channels and frequency selective channels using
KF
as an example the ETSI HiperLAN A-Channel (ETSI A).
Wu et al.
Transmission of 10 OFDM symbols per burst is assumed.
-6
10
10 100 800
A. Properties of an Estimator Phase noise bandwidth ∆ f3dB

The quality of an estimation is investigated in terms of

Fig. 3
the mean square error (MSE) of the estimator for a range
MSE of an estimator for ETSI A channel.
of phase noise bandwidths ∆f3dB ∈ [10 ÷ 800]Hz. Table 1
can be used to relate the phase noise bandwidth with other
quantities. Figures 2 and 3 compare the MSE of the LS
 Table 1
Useful relations

Quantity Symbol Relation Typical values for IEEE802.11a

1
Oscillator constant c[ radHz ] 8.2 · 10−19 ÷ 4.7 · 10−18
Oscillator 3dB bandwidth ∆f3dB [Hz] ∆f3dB = πfc2 c 70 ÷ 400
∆f3dB ∆f3dB
Relative 3dB bandwidth ∆fcar f
N 2 · 10−4 ÷ 13 · 10−4
s
Phase noise energy EPN [rad] EPN = 4π ∆f
∆f
3dB
0.0028 ÷ 0.016
car
fs
Subcarrier spacing ∆fcar ∆fcar = N
312500Hz

B. Symbol Error Rate Degradation 10

-1

Symbol error rate (SER) degradation due to phase noise SNR = 36dB
is investigated also for a range of phase noise bandwidths 64-QAM
Frequecy selective channel: ETSI A Channel
∆f3dB ∈ [10 ÷ 800]Hz and compared for different correc-
tion algorithms. Ideal CPE correction corresponds to the case
when genie CPE values are available. In all cases simple
constellation derotation with φ = − arg {Iˆm (0)} is used.

SER
-2
10 Ideal CPE cor.

-1
no phase noise
10
KF w/o DF
SNR = 22dB
KF with DF
64-QAM
AWGN Wu et al. w/o DF
Wu et al. with DF
-3
10
10 100 800
Ideal CPE cor. Phase noise bandwidth ∆ f3dB
SER

-2
10
Fig. 5
SER degradation for ETSI A channel.
KF w/o DF no phase noise
KF with DF
Wu et al. w/o DF
Wu et al. with DF
-3 not in terms of frequency diversity but the SER vs. SNR
10
10 100 800 having closely exponential dependence. It can be seen that
Phase noise bandwidth ∆ f3dB
our approach shows slightly better performance than [4]
especially for small phase noise bandwidths. What is also
Fig. 4
interesting to note is, that DF is not necessary in the case
SER degradation for AWGN channel.
of ETSI A types of channels (small slope of SER vs. SNR)
while in case of AWGN (large slope) it brings performance
improvement.
In Figs. 4 and 5 SER degradation for AWGN and ETSI A
channels is plotted, respectively. It is interesting to note that
as opposed to the ETSI A channel case in AWGN channel VII. C ONCLUSIONS
there is a gap between the ideal CPE and both correction We investigated the application of a linear Kalman filter
approaches. This can be explained if we go back to Eq. (1) as a means for tracking phase noise and its suppression. The
where we have seen that phase noise affects the constellation proposed algorithm is of low complexity and its performance
as additive noise. Estimation error of phase noise affects the was studied in terms of the mean square error (MSE) of
constellation also in an additive manner. On the other hand an estimator and SER degradation. The performance of
the SER curve without phase noise in the AWGN case is an algorithm is compared with other algorithms showing
much steeper than the corresponding one for the ETSI A equivalent and in some cases better performance.
channel. A small SNR degradation due to estimation errors
will cause therefore large SER variations. This explains why
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