Intercarrier Interference due to Phase Noise in
OFDM - Estimation and Suppression
Denis Petrovic, Wolfgang Rave and Gerhard Fettweis
Vodafone Chair for Mobile Communications, Dresden University of Technology
Helmholtzstrasse 18, Dresden, Germany
Email: {petrovic, rave, fettweis}@ifn.et.tu-dresden.de.
Abstract— In this paper we provide an analysis of the inter-
carrier interference (ICI) due to phase noise in OFDM systems
and present an algorithm for its suppression. We examine the
general case where phase noise can take any values, thus the
”small” phase noise model is dropped. The statistical properties
of the intercarrier interference are analyzed, showing that the
ICI is generally a non-gaussian random process which has a
large impact on the system performance. Closed form expressions
which describe the correlation properties of the constituents of
ICI are calculated. An MMSE approach for suppressing ICI in
the frequency domain is presented. This approach avoids error
propagation to which our previously proposed algorithm was
prone. The performance of the suppression algorithm is shown,
pointing out the limits for the ICI suppression algorithms in
general.
I. I NTRODUCTION
OFDM has been applied in a variety of digital communica-
tions applications due to its robustness to frequency selective
fading. However, OFDM is very sensitive to synchronization
errors one of them being phase noise [1]. This is especially
the case, if bandwidth efficient higher order modulations need
to be employed or if the spacing between the carriers is to be
reduced.
There are two effects that occur if the phase noise is
present in an OFDM system [2]: rotation of all demodulated
subcarriers of an OFDM symbol by a common angle, called
common phase error (CPE) and the occurrence of the inter-
carrier interference (ICI). The CPE results from the DC value
of the phase noise and the ICI comes from the deviations of
the phase noise during one OFDM symbol from its DC value.
The problem of suppressing the phase noise in OFDM
systems can be understood as getting as much information
on the phase noise waveform as possible. Once one has
this information one can use it to remove the effects the
phase noise. The simplest approach would be to approximate
the phase noise with a constant value i.e. its mean [3]–[5].
More advanced approaches try to estimate higher spectral
components to get a better approximation of phase noise thus
reducing ICI [6] [7] [8].
Understanding ICI is a very important issue. Different
models of phase noise lead to different models of the ICI
that may not be realistic i.e. modelling of the phase noise
as a colored gaussian noise. In this paper we use the Wiener
process phase noise model which is found to be an appropriate
description for the phase noise in oscillators [9]. We also drop
the ”small” phase noise model of [1].
Under this assumptions we analyze the properties of the ICI
in Section III. In Section IV the algorithm based on MMSE
is presented, which suppresses ICI in the frequency domain.
At the end, the limits of the ICI suppression are discussed.
II. S YSTEM M ODEL
Consider an OFDM transmission as shown in Fig. 1.
Assuming perfect frequency and timing synchronization
the received OFDM signal samples at the receiver side
in the presence of phase noise can be expressed as
r(n) = (x(n) ⋆ h(n))ejφ(n) + ξ(n). Each OFDM symbol is
assumed to consist of N subcarriers. The variables x(n),
h(n) and φ(n) denote the samples of the transmitted signal,
the channel impulse response and the phase noise process at
the output of the mixer, respectively. The symbol ⋆ stands
for convolution. The term ξ(n) represents AWGN noise. The
phase noise process φ(t) is modelled as a Wiener process [9]
[10], with a certain 3dB bandwidth ∆f3dB . To characterize
the quality of an oscillator in an OFDM system the relative
phase noise bandwidth ∆f3dB,rel = ∆f3dB /∆fcar is more
practical measure, where the ∆fcar is the subcarrier spacing.
The discrete time equation for the Wiener phase noise process
equation can be written as [11] [9]
φ(n + 1) = φ(n) + w(n) (1)
where φ(n) denotes the phase noise process at sampling
instant nTs , n ∈ Z and w(n) is a gaussian random variable
w(n) ∼ N (0, 4π∆f3dB Ts ). At the receiver after removing the
Upconversion
O FDM Modulator
X m ,lk lk = 0,1..., N -1
IFFT CP LPF
x(t )
x(n) = x( nTs )
e j 2π f c t
Channel
Rm ,lk lk = 0,1,...N -1 fs e − j (2π fct −φ ( t ))
FFT CP
r ( n) = r ( nTs ) r (t ) = [ x(t ) ∗ h(t ) ] e jφ ( t )
O FDM Dem odulator Downconversion
Fig. 1. Block diagram of an OFDM transmission chain
cyclic prefix and taking the discrete Fourier transform (DFT)
on the remaining samples, the demodulated carrier amplitudes expression for the cross-correlation matrix of the vector of
Rm,lk at subcarrier lk (lk = 0, 1, ...N − 1) of the mth OFDM DFT coefficients Im (i).
symbol are given as [3]: Define a vector Im = [Im (−N/2) . . . Im (N/2 − 1)] , as a
T

N
X −1 vector of the DFT coefficients of one realization of ejφ(n)
Rm,lk = Xm,lk Hm,lk Im (0) + Xm,n Hm,n Im (lk − n) +ηm,lduring
k one OFDM symbol. The correlation
 matrix of this
| {z } n=0 H
CP E n6=lk
vector is defined as RI I
m m
= E I m I m where H stands
| {z } for Hermitian operator. Using Eq. (3) the (n, p)th element of
ICI
(2) the correlation matrix RIm Im is calculated as:
where Xm,lk , Hm,lk and ηm,lk represent transmitted symbols
on the subcarriers, the sampled channel transfer function at
subcarrier frequencies and transformed white noise which E{Im (n)Im
∗
(p)} =
(N −1 N −1 )
remains AWGN. The terms Im (i) i = −N/2, ..., N/2 − 1 1 X X
j(φ(k)−φ(l)) −j 2π (nk−pl)
correspond to the DFT of one realization of ejφ(n) during one = 2E e e N
N
k=0 l=0
OFDM symbol:
N −1 N −1
1 X X  2π
N −1
1 X −j2πni/N jφ(n) = E ej∆φkl e−j N (nk−pl) (4)
Im (i) = e e (3) N2
k=0 l=0
N n=0

In Eq. (2) the multiplicative distortion term Im (0) common

to all subcarriers of one OFDM symbol, corresponds to the
common phase error (CPE). In the sequel the properties of
ICI and its impact on system performance will be analyzed.
Throughout this work we assume wireless LAN system
parameters based on the IEEE802.11a standard [12]. If not oth-
erwise stated 64-QAM modulation and standard convolutional
code of rate r = 1/2 are used. The channel model assumed
is a passive two-path rayleigh channel model with an impulse
response h(t) = q1 + aq2 δ(t − τ ), where q1 , q2 ∼ CN (0, 1),
τ = Ts and a is a constant which determines the depths of
the channel fades.
III. P ROPERTIES OF THE I NTERCARRIER I NTERFERENCE
The properties of the intercarrier interference term in Eq. (2)
where ∆φkl denotes the cumulative phase noise increment
between the lth and k th samples of the received signal.
From Eq. (1) the increments of the phase noise from sam-
ple to sample are i.i.d. gaussian random variables of vari-
2
ance σw = 4π∆f3dB Ts . ∆φkl , as a sum of gaussian
i.i.d. random variables is also a gaussian random variable
2
∆φkl ∼ N (0, |k − l|σw ). In order to evaluate Eq. (4) the
j∆φkl
expectation E e has to be calculated for each k, l =
0, 1, . . . N − 1.
This expression can be calculated using the definition of
a characteristic function. The characteristic function
 of the
random variable ∆φkl is defined as Φkl (ω) = E ejω∆φkl .
 2
|k−l|σw

have been addressed in several publications [1] [13] [7]. The It follows that E ej∆φkl = Φkl (1) = e− 2 since ∆φkl
ICI term analysis in [1] has been performed assuming that is a gaussian random variable. Finally one obtains that:
the phase noise φ(t) is very small leading to a closed form
expressions for the ICI power. In [13] the assumption of the
small phase noise is dropped and the variance of the ICI term RIm Im (n, p) = E{Im (n)Im
∗
(p)} =
is calculated. Also, the variances of the DFT coefficients of the N −1 N −1
1 X X − |k−l|σw2 −j 2π (nk−pl) 1
phase noise, precisely of ejφ(t) , Im (i) i = −N/2, ..., N/2 − 1 = 2
e 2 e N = 2 F(n, −p) (5)
N N
are obtained. In addition, the system performance is analyzed k=0 l=0

in terms of the SNR degradation at the demodulator due to

phase noise. In [7] the alternative method for obtaining the
variance of Im (i) i = −N/2, ..., N/2 − 1 is presented.
In our opinion for the analysis and performance prediction
of the OFDM system in the presence of the phase noise e.g.
bit error rate, not only the variance of the ICI terms is required
but rather their statistical characterization. ICI is assumed so
far to be gaussian distributed justifying this by the central
limit theorem. This work is motivated by the observation that
this does not hold and that it has implications on the system
performance.
To understand ICI one needs to characterize the coefficients
Im (i) and interactions that arise when they are scaled with
the channel coefficients and transmitted symbols and summed
up as in Eq. (2). To this end we first derive a closed form
where F(n, p) represents the two-dimensional discrete fourier
2
|k−l|σw
transform [14] of e− 2 . We have evaluated the matrix
RIm Im for a relative phase noise bandwidth ∆f3dB,rel =
6.4 · 10−4 which corresponds to the phase noise bandwidth
∆f3dB = 200Hz in a IEEE802.11a and the results are
presented in Fig. 2. Several curves which present the cross-
correlation between some of the DFT coefficients of the phase
noise are shown. It can be seen that the cross-correlation
between the  terms cannot
be neglected when compared to
the terms E |Im (i)|2 . Considering ICI term in Eq. (2),
the correlation between the Im (i)s is destroyed due to the
randomization by data and channel coefficients. The total ICI

Fig. 2. Correlation between DFT components of the phase noise.
power can then be easily calculated as [3]:
N/2−1
X
2
σICI = E{| Xm,q−ν Hm,q−ν Im (ν)|2 }
ν=−N/2
ν6=0
N/2−1
X The benchmark system with phase noise is compared to the
= E{|Xm,q−ν |2 }E{|Hm,q−ν |2 }E{|Im (ν)|2 }
ν=−N/2
ν6=0
N/2−1
X in terms of the SNR loss, this is a fair comparison. If the
= E{|Im (ν)|2 }
ν=−N/2
ν6=0
which equals the sum of the diagonal elements of the corre-
lation matrix RIm Im . It is assumed that E{|Xm,q−ν |2 } = 1
and E{|Hm,q−ν |2 } = 1.
Using computer simulations we have observed that the
ICI term (see Eq. (6)) is not gaussian distributed. We
have performed extensive nonparametric hypothesis testing,
Kolmogorov-Smirnov and Jarque-Bera tests [15], to test ICI
term for gaussianity. We have tested the hypothesis that the
ICI term in Eq. (2), denoted here as X, is complex gaussian
2
variable X ∼ N (0, σICI ) or equivalently that its amplitude
|X| is Rayleigh distributed with the corresponding variance.
2
First we note that the variance of X is equal to σICI of Eq. (6),
which confirms the assumption that the correlation between
the Im (i) coefficients is destroyed by multiplying them with
random transmitted symbols and channel coefficients.
The Fig. 3 plots the complementary cumulative probability
density function CCDF of the ICI term amplitude obtained by
simulating our benchmark system in the presence of the phase
noise. The CCDF of |X| deviates from the expected Rayleigh
distribution which is also plotted. The distribution of |X| has
much broader tails. This points out that the distribution of X
is not complex gaussian.
Fig. 3 also shows the amplitude distribution of the plain
sum of the Im (i) denoted by Z. The distribution deviates
strongly from the Rayleigh distribution. The variance of Z is
2
also larger then σICI which is due to the correlation of Im (i).
The variance of Z can be calculated as a sum of the elements
of the matrix RIm Im excluding the correlation terms which
incorporate Im (0). Fig. 4 shows the effect that the distribution
X , X = ∑ X m ,n H m ,n I m (l − n)
N −1
n=0







n ≠ `l
ICI
Y , Y ∼ N (0,σ ICI
2
)
∑
N / 2−1
Z ,Z = I m (i )
i =− N / 2
Fig. 3. ICI distribution.
of ICI has on the OFDM system symbol error rate (SER).
system where the ICI term is replaced with a gaussian random
2
variable of variance σICI before the demodulator. Note that
(6) phase noise is present we assume ideal common phase error
correction in all cases. The relative phase noise bandwidth is
∆f3dB,rel = 6.4 · 10−4 . For AWGN channel the performance
of the system with ”real” phase noise is much worse than for
the gaussian noise model. For frequency selective channels we
observe an opposite behavior. This is in our opinion explained
by the fact, which distribution is advantageous for which
types of channels. For AWGN the tails of the ICI distribution
are dominant. For frequency selective channels the channel
”fades” are dominant.
IV. ICI C ORRECTION A LGORITHM
The phase noise suppression algorithm presented here, is
a modified version of the ICI cancellation in the frequency
domain which was presented in [7]. Here we avoid the part
error propagation due to the falsely detected symbols, when the
ICI is cancelled as it was the case in [7]. The estimation of the
DFT coefficients Im (i) still suffers form the falsely detected
symbols. Also, the full correlation matrix RJm Jm calculated
in Section III is used, instead of using simplified assumption
in [7] that the correlation matrix is diagonal.
The idea of the algorithm is the following: The factors
Im (i), i = −N/2, ..., N/2 − 1 represent the DFT coefficients
(spectral components) of one realization of the random process
ejφ(n) . Further, ejφ(n) has the characteristics of a low-pass
signal with power spectral density of the form 1/(1 + f 2 ),
where f denotes the frequency [7] [9]. Due to the shape of
the spectrum of ejφ(n) , very few low pass spectral components
 The vector Ũm of estimated DFT coefficients of e−jφ(n)
can then be formed as described above.
The demodulated symbols with suppressed intercarrier
interference up to order u are obtained as :

R̃m,N = Rm,N ⊙ Ũm (7)

V. E STIMATION OF SPECTRAL COMPONENTS Im (i)

Define the set L = {l1 , l2 , l3 , ...lk } as a subset of the set
{0, 1, ...N − 1}. Let further Rm = [Rm,l1 , Rm,l2 , ...Rm,lk ]T
be the vector of the received symbols at subset L of all
subcarriers. Each of the components of the vector Rm can
be expressed as in Eq. (2) and thus Rm can be expressed in
a matrix form as given by
 
al 1
 al 2 
Fig. 4. Phase noise influence on system performance.  
Rm = Am Jm + εm =  .  Jm + εm (8)
 .. 
al k
will suffice to give a ”good” approximation of the phase noise | {z }
Am
waveform [7].
The phase noise suppression in the time domain would In Eq. (8) the vectors ali and Jm are defined as:
be a logical approach. One should multiply the received  T  
signal r(n) = (x(n) ⋆ h(n))ejφ(n) + ξ(n) with e−jφ(n) , in Hm,li Xm,li Im (0)
a real case only with its estimation. Multiplication in the time  Hm,li −1 Xm,li −1   Im (1) 
   
domain for discrete time systems is mapped to the circular  Hm,li +1 Xm,li +1 
ali = 
 .. 
 and Jm =  .  (9)
convolution of DFT spectra in the frequency domain [14].  ..   
 .   Im (u) 
This means that the ICI cancellation for the mth OFDM
Hm,li +u Xm,li +u Im (−u)
symbol in the frequency domain can be done by circularly
convolving the demodulated symbols vector of all subcarriers where the vector Jm is the vector of spectral components, up
Rm,N = [Rm (0), . . . , Rm (N − 1)]T with the vector of the to order u, u ≤ N/2, we wish to estimate.
′
DFT coefficients of e−jφ(n) . Using properties of the DFT [14], The term εm = ζ ICI + η m is composed of the additive
if Im = DF T {ejφ(n) }, then the spectrum of the complex noise term η m = [ηm,l1 , ηm,l2 , . . . , ηm,lk ]T and the vector
′
conjugate signal e−jφ(n) reads as Um (i) = I∗m (−i), i = ′ ′ ′
ζ ICI = [ζICI,l1 ζICI,l2 . . . ζICI,lk ]T which represents the
−N/2, ..., N/2 − 1 where Um = DF T {e−jφ(n) }. Therefore ′
residual ICI vector. The components of the vector ζ ICI ,
the ICI suppression in the frequency domain can be done by ′
namely ζICI,li , li ∈ L, incorporate all the remainder addends
circularly convolving the vectors Rm,N and Um .
in a sum of Eq. (2) for a corresponding lith carrier which are
The task of the ICI suppression algorithm is to estimate
nor incorporated in the product ali Jm .
the DFT components of the phase noise and suppress ICI by
performing deconvolution in the frequency domain. The details The system model represented by Eq. (8) is a linear model
of it are presented here: with respect to the vector Jm and we choose the minimum
mean square estimation (MMSE) to estimate this vector from
1) Perform standard OFDM demodulation and obtain an
the demodulated received symbols vector Rm .
estimate I˜m (0) of Im (0), using a Kalman filter [4] or
The MMSE estimate of the vector Jm is given by
some other method [3] [5] and derotate the demodulated
signal constellation. J̃m = MRm (10)
2) Using such a derotated constellation make a decision on
the transmitted symbols and use these hard decisions for where M = RJm Jm AH H
m (Am RJm Jm Am + Rεm εm )
−1
, and
the estimation of the Jm i.e.I˜m (i), i = −u...u according RJm Jm and Rεm εm represent correlation matrices of Jm and
to the method provided in Section V. The justification εm respectively.
for using these decisions for Im (i) estimation is that Note that the estimation of Jm assumes the knowledge of
even for very high phase noise bandwidth just a fraction one part of the transmitted symbols apart from the channel
of the decided symbols will be erroneous [7]. knowledge. These symbols are obtained in a decision feedback
3) The estimated DFT coefficients I˜m (i), i = −u...u (DF) manner described in Section IV.
comprise the vector Ĩm which denotes the vector of The correlation matrix RJm Jm can be obtained form RIm Im
estimated DFT coefficients of the phase noise. All by selecting the required columns and rows of RIm Im , which
unestimated terms I˜m (i), |i| > u are adopted to be zero. was calculated in Section III.
 ′
Further we have Rεm εm = diag(E{|ζICI (l1 )|2 } +
′ ′
σn , . . . , E{|ζICI (lk )|2 }+σn2 ) where ζICI (q) denote the resid-
2 significant ICI term can come from very distant subcarriers.
ual ICI power as discussed above.
′
Using Eqs. (2) and (8) ζICI (q), q ∈ L can be expressed as
N/2−1
′ X
ζICI (q) = Xm,q−ν Hm,q−ν Im (ν)
ν=−N/2
|ν|>u
′ The conclusion is that the performance of one ICI suppression
The power of the ζICI (q) is calculated similarly as in Eq. (6)
as
N/2−1
′ X
E{|ζICI (q)|2 } = E{|Im (ν)|2 }.
ν=−N/2
ν>|u|
VI. N UMERICAL R ESULTS
We address the following question: What are the limiting
factors in suppressing the phase noise? Fig. 5 shows the
performance of the OFDM system in the presence of the
phase noise. The channel profile with a = 0.8 is adopted.
Four scenarios are compared: 1) without phase noise 2) with
phase noise and genie CPE correction 3) with phase noise
and genie ICI correction of different orders 4) with phase
noise and ICI correction of different orders using the proposed
algorithm, assuming that for the CPE correction a Kalman
filter is used [4]. As opposed to the expectations in [7]
even very good approximation of the phase (20 order) is not
enough for significant performance improvement for frequency
selective rayleigh fading channels. Consider Eq. (2) which can
be visualized as in Fig. 6. As it is noticed in [7], in AWGN
Fig. 5. ICI suppression performance.
channels, most of the interference comes from the neighboring
subcarriers. Due to the Lorentzian spectrum of the phase noise
most of the energy of the phase noise is concentrated, in the
spectral components Im (i) around zero frequency (see Fig. 2).
In the frequency selective channels however the channel pre-
multiplies each of the Im (i) i 6= 0. That means that the
channel is shaping the spectrum of the phase noise and thus
Therefore in general a very small components Im (i) of the
phase noise can have very significant contribution to ICI due
to channel. This explains why one needs very high spectral
components of the phase noise to get significant performance
(11)
improvement. We want to note that the estimation of the phase
noise waveform we obtain is significantly better than its DC.
algorithms depends on the both phase noise characteristics and
the channel profile.
X m ,l −2 H m ,l −2 I m (2) X m,l + 2 H m ,l + 2 I m (−2)
I m (0)
X m,l −u H m,l −u I m (u ) X m ,l −1 H m ,l −1 I m (1) X m,l +1 H m,l +1 I m ( −1) X m ,l +u H m ,l +u I m (−u )
l−2 l −1 l l +1 l+2
Frequency index
Fig. 6. ICI explanation.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work was supported by the German ministry of re-
search and education within the project (WIGWAM) under
grant 01 BU 370
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