Particle filter with ant colony optimization for frequency offset estimation in OFDM systems with unknown noise distribution

Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is sensitive to carrier frequency offset (CFO) that causes inter-carrier interference (ICI). In this paper, a particle filter (PF) method augmented with ant colony optimization (ACO) is developed to estimate the CFO. The ACO for continuous domains is incorporated into PF to optimize the sampling process. Unlike the standard PF, resampling is not required in the method. Moreover, it does not require the noise distribution. Simulation results show that the proposed method is effective when estimating the CFO and can effectively combat the effect of ICI in OFDM systems.