BER analysis of uplink OFDMA in the presence of carrier frequency and timing offsets

In uplink orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA), carrier frequency offsets (CFO) and/or timing offsets (TO) of other users with respect to a desired user can cause significant multiuser interference (MUI). In this paper, we derive analytical bit error rate (BER) expressions that quantify the degradation of BER due to the combined effect of both CFOs as well as TOs; such an analytical BER derivation has not been reported so far for uplink OFDMA in the presence of CFOs and TOs. For the case when the desired user is perfectly frequency/time aligned (and other users have non-zero CFOs/TOs), we obtain an exact closed-form expression for the BER. For the case when the desired user also has non-zero CFO/TO, we obtain an approximate BER expression involving a single integral. Analytical and simulation results are shown to match quite well.