An Overview of MC-CDMA Synchronisation Sensitivity

This paper presents an overview of the effect of synchronisation errors on MCCDMA performance in downlink communications. We distinguish two types of synchronisation errors: carrier phase errors and timing errors. We show that the MC-CDMA system is very sensitive to a carrier frequency offset or a clock frequency offset. For a maximal load, carrier phase jitter and timing jitter give rise to a degradation that is independent of the spectral content of the jitter; moreover, the degradation caused by carrier phase jitter and timing jitter is (essentially) independent of the number of carriers. A constant carrier phase offset and a constant timing offset cause no degradation of the MC-CDMA system performance.