Synchronization requirements for COFDM systems with transmit diversity

COFDM in combination with transmit and receive diversity is an attractive technique to increase robustness and throughput of wireless data transmission. In this paper we examine whether the sensitivity of COFDM to synchronization errors is further aggravated by these multiinput multioutput (MIMO) scenarios. A MIMO transmission model including synchronization errors is developed. Analytical expressions for the resulting disturbances are derived and verified against simulations. An analysis of the effects on optimal MIMO decoding shows that the resulting disturbances can no longer be modelled as white Gaussian noise.