Analysis of phase noise in vector OFDM systems

Vector Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (V-OFDM) for single transmit antenna systems is a generalization of OFDM where Single-Carrier Frequency Domain Equalization (SC-FDE) and OFDM are two special cases. It has been shown to be able to collect multipath diversity and thus generally outperforms OFDM. The performance of OFDM under phase noise has been extensively studied in literature. These effects can be summarized as introducing a Common Phase Error (CPE) and Inter Carrier Interference (ICI) resulting in poor performance. The performance of V-OFDM under phase noise still remains uninvestigated and in this paper it is shown that phase noise in V-OFDM systems leads to a Common Vector Block Phase Error (CVBPE) as well as an Inter Vector Block Carrier Interference (IVBCI) effect. Both of these effects are detrimental to the performance of a V-OFDM system. An exact expression for the Signal to Interference Noise Ratio (SINR) for a V-OFDM system is derived and found to agree closely with simulation results.