Signal acquisition and tracking for fixed wireless access multiple input multiple output orthogonal frequency division multiplexing

The general objective of this proposed research is to design and develop signal acquisition and tracking algorithms for multiple input multiple output orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (MIMO-OFDM) systems for fixed wireless access applications. The algorithms are specifically targeted for systems that work in time division multiple access (TDMA) and frequency division multiple access (FDMA) frame modes. In our research, we first develop a comprehensive system model for a MIMO-OFDM system under the influence of the radio frequency (RF) oscillator frequency offset, sampling frequency (SF) offset, RF oscillator phase noise, frequency selective channel impairments and finally the additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN). We then develop the acquisition and tracking algorithms to estimate and track all these parameters. The acquisition and tracking algorithms are assisted by a preamble consisting of one or more training sequences and pilot symbol matrices. Along with the signal acquisition and tracking algorithms, we also consider design of the MIMO-OFDM preamble and pilot signals that enable the suggested algorithms to work efficiently.; Signal acquisition as defined in our research consists of time and RF synchronization, SF offset estimation and correction, phase noise estimation and correction and finally channel estimation. Signal tracking consists of RF, SF, phase noise and channel tracking. Time synchronization, RF oscillator frequency offset, SF oscillator frequency offset, phase noise and channel estimation and tracking are all research topics by themselves. A large number of studies have addressed these issues, but usually individually and for single-input single-output (SISO) OFDM systems. In the proposed research we present a complete suite of signal acquisition and tracking algorithms for MIMO-OFDM systems along with Cramer-Rao bounds for the SISO-OFDM case. In addition, we also derive the Maximum Likelihood (ML) estimates of the parameters for the SISO-OFDM case.; Our proposed research is unique from the existing literature in that it presents a complete receiver implementation for MIMO-OFDM systems and accounts for the cumulative effects of all possible acquisition and tracking errors on the bit error rate (BER) performance. The suggested algorithms and the pilot/training schemes may be applied to any MIMO OFDM system and are independent of the space-time coding techniques that are employed.