This paper presents a new and robust technique for a coarse frequency offset estimation in OFDM system. As an evaluation of the proposed algorithm, we apply it to Eureka 147 DAB system. The proposed coarse frequency offset estimation algorithm is based on the differential detection technique between adjacent subcarriers to eliminate the phase shift effects of symbol timing offset and fractional frequency offset. Coarse frequency offset is determined from the correlation outputs between a received intercarrier differential phase reference symbol and several locally generated but frequency shifted intercarrier differential phase reference symbols. The performance of our estimation algorithm is evaluated by means of computer simulation and compared with that of previous proposed algorithms for DAB transmission modes I, II, III and IV. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm generates extremely accurate estimates with a low complexity irrespective of the symbol timing offset.

One of the main disadvantage of multi-carrier CDMA (MC-CDMA) signals is the high peak power of the transmitted signals which limits their applications. To account for this issue, we provide a simple signal processing for reducing the high crest factor (CF) of MC-CDMA signals. Using this modified MC-CDMA signal, the high CF due to Walsh spreading sequences can be mitigated without explicit side information and degradation in the detection performance.