Carrier Synchronization in SC-FDMA System for Satellite Uplink

Single carrier frequency division multiple access (SC-FDMA) is a multicarrier modulation technique known for its low peak-to-average ratio (PAPR) and high spectral efficiency. However, SC-FDMA is more sensitive to carrier frequency offset than single carrier systems. In this paper, a method is proposed to analyse the frequency offset tolerance of SC-FDMA systems under different constellation modulations, and to use it as a theoretical guide for selecting the frequency offset estimation method. An none-data-aided (NDA) method is proposed and the estimation performance of data-aided (DA) and NDA methods are compared. It is found that the proposed carrier frequency offset synchronization method can satisfy the packet error rate (PER) performance with a difference of about 0.2 dB from the ideal case.