Joint CFO and Channel Estimation for Asynchronous Cooperative Communication Systems

This letter addresses the joint maximum likelihood carrier frequency offset (CFO) and channel estimation for asynchronous cooperative communication systems. We first present a space-alternating generalized expectation-maximization (SAGE) based iterative estimator (SAGE-IE). Then a low-complexity approximate SAGE-IE (A-SAGE-IE) is developed. Our proposed algorithms decouple the multi-dimensional optimization problem into many one-dimensional optimization problems where the CFO and channel coefficients of each relay-destination link can be determined separately. Simulations indicate that, even though timing offsets are present, the proposed estimators can asymptotically achieve the Cramer-Rao bround (CRB) for the perfectly timing synchronized case.