2nd order cyclostationarity of OFDM signals: Impact of pilot tones and cyclic prefix

This paper deals with 2nd order cyclostationarity of orthogonal frequency division multiplex (OFDM) signals. A new generalized formula for the spectral correlation density (SCD) function is derived. Compared to related work in the literature, our derivation is not restricted to the case that all sub-carriers of an OFDM signal carry statistically independent data. The reason for that is that correlated data in terms of pilot tones are typically introduced on different carriers for channel estimation and synchronization purposes. The new formula allows us to analyze the impact of such pilot tones on the SCD. In addition, it gives extra information about the impact of the cyclic prefix.