A WAVELET BASED FREQUENCY OFFSET ESTIMATION IN OFDM
SYSTEMS
Anis BEN AICHA Fethi TLILI
MASC. Department,Ecole Supérieure des Communications de Tunis (SUP’COM),
Cité Technologique des Communications, Route de Raoued, Km 3.5, 2083, Ariana, Tunisia
Email : fethi.tlili@supcom.rnu.tn, sofia.benjebara@supcom.rnu.tn
ABSTRACT
This paper deals with frequency offset estimation in
OFDM systems. The proposed approach is based on adapted
wavelet packet decomposition of the shifted received signal.
The binary tree is optimized according to a comparison be-
tween decomposed signals energy in iterative manner. The
proposed approach is characterized by small number of it-
erations, short wavelet packet filters and robustness against
additive noise power.
Keywords : Frequency offset, OFDM, wavelet packet,
tree selection, energy criterion
1. INTRODUCTION
Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM)
is being considered for data transmission in a number of en-
vironments [1],[2]. It’s very robust against multipath fading
and is useful for channels that present strong linear distor-
tion, as in case of terrestrial broadcasting [2]. One limita-
tion of OFDM in many applications is that it is very sen-
sitive to frequency errors caused by frequency differences
between the local oscillators in the transmitter and the re-
ceiver [3],[4]. Carrier frequency offset causes a number of
impairments including attenuation, rotation of each of the
sub-carrier and inter-carrier interference (ICI) between sub-
carriers.
A number of methods have been developed to reduce
this sensitivity to frequency offset. We relate for exam-
ple techniques based on windowing in the time domain of
OFDM signals [5], self inter-carrier interference cancella-
tion [8] and frequency offset estimation [6], [7].
In this paper, we present a new technique to estimate fre-
quency offset based on using wavelet packet decomposition.
In fact, while wavelet transform permits signal-independent
decomposition, wavelet packet transform allows a signal-
dependent partition of the frequency axis. We think that
by adapting the decomposition, it is possible to extract and
Sofia BEN JEBARA
isolate the frequency band where shifted received signal en-
ergy is quasi-null and which corresponds normally to the
frequency offset.
The paper is organized as follow : in section 2, we
give the useful background (problem statement and wavelet
packet tool). In section 3, we develop the proposed ap-
proach. Section 4 is devoted to performances analysis and
algorithm validation in noisy context.
2. BACKGROUND
2.1. Problem statement
OFDM systems consist of N orthogonal sub-carriers with
equi-spaced frequencies. Its implementation complexity is
considerably reduced by using an IFFT at the transmitter
side and a FFT at the receiver side. Nevertheless, in pres-
ence of Doppler shift or receiver Local Oscillator (LO) inac-
curacy, the received signal spectrum is shifted by a quantity
commonly called frequency offset. As a consequence, sub-
carriers orthogonality is lost giving rise to ICI and severe
performance degradation.
2.2. Interest with wavelet packet
The frequency offset shifts OFDM spectrum by ∆f0 . The
energy of the shifted signal at the low pass band limited to
∆f0 is then null. We propose to isolate this band by using
wavelet packet transform. In fact, the important property
of wavelet transform is the frequency domain division in
dyadic manner. The wavelet packets are a generalization
of this concept in which arbitrary time-frequency resolution
can be chosen according to the signal of interest. In this
frequency offset estimation context, we aim to find the best
wavelet packet decomposition which allows to situate the
frequency offset in a limited frequency band obtained by
adapted wavelet packet division. The choice of the adapted
wavelet packet division depends on a selected criterion. In
this study context, we use the energy criterion. The choice
 R(t)
is motivated by the fact that the energy of the band corre-
?

×  e(−j2π(fc +∆f0 )t)
sponding to the offset is less than the one corresponding to
the signal spectrum. This idea will be discussed in more 

detail later. ? r(t)
FPB
? r0 (t)
2.3. Short review of wavelet packet
Binary tree
In this subsection, we remind the useful wavelet packet tools construction
to drive to proposed frequency offset estimator. The real-
time wavelet packet algorithm is based on the two-bands
decomposition algorithm of Mallat [9]. It is based on a fil- ?
ter banks structure. A low-pass filter and a high-pass filter ˆ 0 computation
∆f
are convolved with the analyzed signal and the results of
these convolutions are subsequently decimated, yielding to ?
the approximation coefficients and the detail coefficients. ˆ 0
∆f
In case of complete wavelet packet tree, both detail and ap-
proximation coefficients are iteratively processed. In case of
adapted wavelet packet decomposition, an optimized binary Fig. 1. Frequency offset estimator principle.
tree can be built by iterating the two-band decomposition
scheme on some of the new created nodes. The optimized
we apply the same iterative decomposition as previous. The
tree is extracted according to a chosen criterion [10].
process is stopped when the desired precision is reached.
The proposed iterative wavelet packet decomposition gives
3. FREQUENCY OFFSET ESTIMATOR rice to a binary tree according to which we can built two
ALGORITHM groups A and B. A contains levels where approximation
coefficients energies are less than detail coefficients ener-
3.1. Proposed scheme gies and B contains the remaining levels.

Fig. 1 presents the proposed algorithm for frequency off- 3.3. Frequency offset estimation
set estimation. The pass-band received signal R(t) is base-
band transformed by means of a local oscillator receiver First of all, we remind that when we get down at level l in
whose frequency is the carrier frequency fc with a random the tree, the approximation and detail coefficients take off
deviation ∆f0 . The resulting signal r(t) is filtered by a low- half of the band width of approximation an detail at level
pass filter whose cutoff frequency F0 is larger than maximal i − 1. At iteration i, we can estimate frequency offset in one
possible frequency offset [3]. The obtained signal r0 (t) is interval using the following equation :
then decomposed using wavelet packet in order to obtain an  
adaptive binary-tree decomposition. We hence perform a X 1 X 1
signal-dependent partition of the frequency axis which per- Dfi 0 ∈ F0 , F0 (1 − ) . (1)
2i 2j
mits to isolate the frequency band characterizing the fre- i∈A j∈B

quency offset. In the next subsection, we detail the pro-

At the last iteration Imax , the frequency offset estima-
posed iterative wavelet decomposition allowing frequency ˆ 0 is calculated according to DImax as the middle of
tion ∆f f0
offset localization.
the latest interval :
X 1 X 1
3.2. Binary tree construction F0 + F 0 (1 − )
2i 2j
i∈A j∈B
ˆ
∆f0 = . (2)
First, we decompose the received signal using one stage of 2
wavelet decomposition. We obtain then the approximation
signal a1 and the detail signal d1 . Then, we compare the 3.4. Illustration
energy of a1 (denoted Ea1 ) to that of d1 (denoted Ed1 ). If
Ea1 < Ed1 , we apply again one stage of wavelet decom- Fig. 2 illustrates the binary tree decomposition, the fre-
position considering now a1 as the new decomposed signal. quency offset interval Dfi 0 (i = 1, ..., Imax ) and the fre-
We continue this process in iterative manner until we get ˆ 0 at iteration Imax . The case of
quency offset estimation ∆f
Eai > Edi (where i denotes the iteration number). At this Imax = 5 is considered. According to the graph, we ob-
step, we consider di as the new processed signal for which tain the set of approximation coefficients having less energy
 0.03
than detail coefficients A = {2, 4, 5} and the set of the re-
maining coefficients B = {1, 3}. The estimated frequency
ˆ 0 = 23 F0 .
0.025

offset is equal to ∆f
128
0.02

relative error ε
4. SIMULATION RESULTS
0.015

4.1. Validity of the approach

0.01

In Fig. 3, we plot the evolution of the estimated frequency

ˆ 0 versus real frequency offset. this figure shows
offset ∆f 0.005

ˆ
that ∆f0 fluctuates near real frequency offset (ligne diag-
onale). We also notice the evolution in stairs since the es- 0
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20
order of daubechies wavelet
timated frequency offset is calculated as the middle of the
latest interval ∆f0Imax . So, all frequency offset within this Fig. 4. Effect of the wavelet filter on the relative error of
interval are estimated by the same value. estimation.

4.5 wavelet packet filters. The case of frequency offset equal to

40hz is tested. We notice that the relative error of estima-
4
tion is insensitive to the SN R for all tested filters. This fact
Estimated frequency offset

3.5 is foreseeable since additive white Gaussian does not affect

the flatness of the treated signal spectrum.
3

0.03
2.5

2 0.025

1.5
0.02

1 db1
relative error

1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5 db

∆ f0
Real frequecy offset 2
0.015 db4

ˆ 0
Fig. 2. Evolution of the estimated frequency offset ∆f
db14

versus real frequency offset. 0.01

0.005

4.2. Effect of wavelet packet filters 0

5 10 15 20
SNR (dB)

In Fig. 4, we show the effect of wavelet packet filters on the Fig. 5. Effect of the SN R on relative error of estimation.
relative error of estimation  given by:
ˆ 0 − ∆f0 |
|∆f
= (3)
|∆f0 | 5. CONCLUSION
We consider the case of Daubechies filters with different
lengths [11]. We notice that  increase when the filter order In this paper, a novel wavelet packet approach for frequency
increases. The best filter leading to lowest  is Haar wavelet. offset estimation in OFDM systems is presented. It is based
It is characterized by the following low pass filter impulse on iterative signals decomposition according to a compari-
√
2 son between decomposed signals energy. The proposed ap-
response H = 2 [11]T . This is very important result since
proach is validated by simulation results in case of noisless
using Haar wavelet decreases the complexity of realization
and noisy context.
and improves rapidness of algorithm.

4.3. Robustness against White Additive Gaussien Noise

In Fig. 5, we plot the evolution of relative error of estima-
tion versus the SN R (Signal to Noise Ratio) for different
 6. REFERENCES

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R0 (f )
6
r0 (t) level ∆f0
 -
v 0 -

A A1 (f ) F0 f

A 6

A

A


a1
v AAv -

A 1 F0 f
d1 6
D2 (f ) 2

A

A

A


f A vd -
2
a2
A 2 F0 F0 f

A 6
A3 (f ) 22 2

A

A
a3

v Av 3 -

A F0 F0
+ F0 f

A
d3 64 (f )
D 22 22 23

A

A


f A vd -
4 4
a4
A F0
+ F0 F0
+ F0 f

A 65 (f )
D 22 24 22 23

A ˆ 0

A  ∆f -


f Av -
5
a5 d5 F0
+ F0
+ F0 F0
+ F0 f
22 24 25 22 23

Fig.2. Illustration of iterative approach.