Phase noise compensation for OFDM WLAN systems using superimposed pilots

In this paper, a novel phase-error estimation technique for OFDM based WLAN system is proposed. The proposed technique utilizes superimposed (or embedded) pilots for phase-tracking within OFDM data packet. This leads to saving transmission bandwidth, which is lost in the conventional phase-error estimation schemes with dedicated pilot subcarriers. Moreover, we propose selective pilot mapping and decision feedback as different strategies of improving the performance of the proposed technique. Simulation results confirm that the proposed technique has a similar symbol error performance to that of conventional scheme, however with the advantage of data-rate increase.