The impact and correction of timing error, frequency offset and phase noise in IEEE 802.11a and ETSI HiperLAN/2

The aim of this paper is to discuss and explore the impact of practical impairments such as timing error, frequency offset and phase noise on the physical layer performance of IEEE 802.11a and ETSI HiperLAN/2. Standard compliant correction techniques are identified or developed to exploit the allocated preambles and pilot symbols embedded in these standards. The paper includes physical layer performance results in the presence of each form of degradation. These results are presented in terms of packet error rate and bit error rate versus signal to noise ratio for IEEE/ETSI standard indoor channel models of A and E. The performance gain of the corrected receiver is then compared to that of an unaided device. Results indicate that an acceptable level of performance can be achieved over the full range of practical impairments given careful receiver design.