SNR Degradation due to Carrier Frequency Offset in OFDM based Amplify-and-Forward Relay Systems

In this letter, signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) performance is analyzed for orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) based amplify-and-forward (AF) relay systems in the presence of carrier frequency offset (CFO) for fading channels. The SNR expression is derived under one-relay-node scenario, and is further extended to multiple-relay-node scenario. Analytical results show that the SNR is quite sensitive to CFO and the sensitivity of the SNR to CFO is mainly determined by the power of the corresponding link channel and gain factor.