Pilot-Aided Carrier Frequency Estimation for Filter-Bank Multicarrier Wireless Communications on Doubly-Selective Channels

Multicarrier modulation techniques are currently the key technology in the area of high-data-rate transmission over wireless fading channels. Their considerable vulnerability to car- rier frequency offsets, however, hinders their appealing features and demands adequate countermeasures. This paper contributes with a class of frequency estimation algorithms intended for filter bank burst-mode multicarrier transmission over time-frequency selective fading channels. All algorithms are derived from the maximum likelihood principle, exhibit a feedforward structure and are based on the use of pilot symbols scattered throughout the burst. The accuracy of the proposed schemes is investigated in typical mobile wireless scenarios, showing that they outperform maximum likelihood non-data-aided frequency recovery in spite of a substantially lower computational requirement.