Patent ID: 8184523

Claim:
A method for processing an Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) signal in an OFDM receiver, the method comprising the steps of: receiving the OFDM signal; extracting a first plurality of pilots from a first user data segment of the received OFDM signal; calculating an independent phase error for each pilot of the first plurality of pilots and a first common phase error based upon an average of said independent phase errors for each pilot of said first plurality of pilots; extracting a second plurality of pilots from a second user data segment of the received OFDM signal, each pilot of said second plurality of pilots associated with one pilot from said first plurality of pilots; separately derotating each pilot of said second plurality of extracted pilots to reduce the independent phase error of each pilot of said second plurality of pilots using the calculated first common phase error and the calculated independent phase error for the associated pilot from said first plurality of pilots; calculating a phase error for each separately derotated pilot of said second plurality of pilots and a second common phase error based in part upon an average of said phase errors for each separately derotated pilot of said second plurality of extracted pilots; integrating the second common phase error to reduce the effects of noise; and deriving a carrier frequency offset estimate from the integrated second common phase error.