Preamble Design for an Efficient I/Q Imbalance
Compensation in OFDM Direct-Conversion
Receivers
Marcus Windisch and Gerhard Fettweis
Vodafone Chair Mobile Communications Systems, Technische Universität Dresden,
01062 Dresden, Germany
Email: windisch@ifn.et.tu-dresden.de
Abstract— The growing number of different mobile com-
munications standards calls for inexpensive and highly flex-
ible receiver architectures supporting these standards. The
direct-conversion receiver is a very attractive candidate for
reaching this goal. However, unavoidable imbalances be-
tween the I- and the Q-branch of the I/Q demodulator lead
to a significant performance degradation at the reception of
OFDM signals.
A digital estimation and compensation of the unwanted ef-
fects of the I/Q imbalance is possible. In this paper we con-
sider an I/Q imbalance parameter estimation based on the
preamble of OFDM systems. General constraints for the de-
sign of the preamble are derived, which enable a robust and
computationally efficient I/Q imbalance compensation. De-
sign examples are presented and evaluated.
I. I NTRODUCTION
Advanced receiver architectures based on I/Q signal pro-
cessing are very attractive because the need for a bulky
analog image rejection filter is avoided. However, one of
the drawbacks is I/Q imbalance, resulting from imperfect
matching of the analog components in the I- and the Q-
branch of the receiver [2].
A very promising approach for coping with these ana-
log impairments is to compensate them digitally. Differ-
ent concepts for the digital estimation and compensation
of the I/Q imbalance in OFDM direct conversion receivers
have been proposed in the literature. The most simple ap-
proach is to perform an off-line calibration based on the in-
jection of analog test signals [4]. Alternatively, an on-line
parameter estimation is possible by using a priori infor-
mation about the transmitted signal, such as pilot symbols
or the preamble [3], [7], [5]. However, in addition to the
receiver I/Q imbalance, the transmitted reference symbols
are corrupted by other effects, such as the wireless channel
and various impairments at the transmitter and the receiver.
Because all these effects have to be considered, an accurate
parameter estimation based on reference symbols is com-
putationally costly.
The dependency on reference symbols can be dropped
by considering the symmetric properties of the I/Q imbal-
This work was partly supported by the German Ministry of Education
and Research (BMBF) within the project Wireless Gigabit with advanced
multimedia support (WIGWAM) under grant 01BU370
ance distortion. It has been shown in [8], that this symme-
try enables a blind I/Q imbalance parameter estimation by
evaluating the statistics of the received OFDM symbols. In
practice, the statistics required for the parameter estimation
have to be approximated by a sufficiently large number of
observed OFDM symbols. Hence, the number of transmit-
ted OFDM symbols required for the parameter estimation
is usually increased compared to the reference-based ap-
proaches. This drawback is a consequence of the deliberate
waiver of any presumed reference symbols.
On the other hand, pilots and/or preambles are funda-
mental building blocks in many practical OFDM wireless
LAN systems. The existence of reference symbols is es-
sential for the channel estimation and the synchroniza-
tion in time and frequency [6]. The accuracy of the blind
I/Q imbalance parameter estimation in [8] can be signifi-
cantly increased, if pilot symbols with ”good” properties
are available [9]. Therefore, the goal of this paper is to
combine the benefits of the flexible, low-complexity pa-
rameter estimation scheme in [8] with the potential of a
more accurate estimation due to a proper design of the
preamble.
The outline of this paper is as follows: In section II
an equivalent OFDM baseband model is presented, which
models the effects of a noisy frequency-selective fading
channel, I/Q imbalance and phase errors, such as carrier
frequency offset. Based on the original I/Q imbalance pa-
rameter estimation scheme in [8], general constraints for
the design of a ”good” preamble are derived in section III.
3 exemplary preambles based on the IEEE 802.11a WLAN
system are designed and evaluated in section IV, followed
by the conclusions in section V.
II. S YSTEM M ODEL
The purpose of any receiver architecture is to convert a
radio frequency (RF) signal down to the base band (BB).
The real RF signal at the antenna of the receiver can be
written as
r(t) = y(t)e+j2πfC t + y ∗ (t)e−j2πfC t , (1)
where y(t) denotes the complex base band equivalent of
the frequency band of interest, fC denotes its carrier fre-
 zI (t) x(t) y(t) ỹ(t) z(t)
LPF Wireless Phase Errors I/Q
Antenna
and RF Channel (e.g. CFO) Imbalance
zQ (t) h(t), Hm (n) c(t), Cm (n) K1 , K2
Front-End
g LPF
Xm (n) Ym (n) Ỹm (n) Zm (n)

cos[2πfC t + c(t)]
LO 90◦ + φ
Fig. 2. Distortion of the BB signal due to both the wireless channel and
direct conversion with phase errors and I/Q imbalance
Fig. 1. Direct conversion receiver with phase errors and I/Q imbalance

quency and (·)∗ denotes (complex) conjugation. The im-
pact of the wireless communication channel can be mod-
elled by the well know equivalent based band model:
y(t) = x(t) ∗ h(t) + w(t),
where x(t) denotes the transmitted BB signal, ∗ denotes
convolution, and h(t),w(t) denote the (complex valued)
baseband equivalents of the channel impulse response and
the channel noise, respectively.
The fundamental principle of the so called direct-
conversion receiver architecture is to perform the conver-
sion from the RF down to the BB using complex (I/Q)
signal processing [2]. In two parallel branches, the RF
signal is multiplied by two orthogonal phases of a local
oscillator (LO) signal. The frequency of the LO fLO is
chosen equal to the carrier frequency of the desired RF
signal. Ideally, the complex LO signal has the time func-
tion zLO (t) = e−j2πfC t , which corresponds to the desired
down-conversion by fC .
Unfortunately, in practice neither a perfect match with
the desired frequency nor a perfect analog I/Q mixing is
achievable. Unavoidable tolerances in the manufacturing
process lead to deviations from the desired 90◦ phase shift
and the desired equal gain in the I- and the Q-branch (Fig.
1). These imperfections can be modelled by a complex LO
signal with the time function
z̃LO (t) = cos[2πfC t + c(t)] − jg sin[2πfC t + c(t) + ϕ],
where g denotes the gain imbalance and ϕ denotes the
phase imbalance between the I- and the Q-branch. The
time variant function c(t) models deviations from the ideal
phase, known as phase noise. The most dominant phase
error in practice is the so called carrier frequency offset
(CFO), which can be described by c(t) = c0 + 2πΔf t.
In this case, c0 denotes the initial phase offset and Δf =
fLO − fC denotes the carrier frequency offset. Based on g
and ϕ, the complex valued I/Q imbalance parameters
1 + ge−jϕ 1 − ge+jϕ
K1 = , K2 =
2 2
are defined, in order to rewrite the time function of the
complex LO with I/Q imbalance and phase error as:
where
ỹ(t) = y(t)e−jc(t) (6)
and LP {·} denotes low pass filtering. Summarizing, the
impact of the channel, the phase error and the I/Q imbal-
(2) ance in the receiver can be modelled by a set of subsequent
and linear operations, as indicated by equations (2),(6),
and (5) (see also Figure 2).
This general model can be applied to the transmission of
OFDM signals. Exemplarily for the transmitted baseband
signal, the frequency domain symbols Xm (n) can be com-
puted from the discrete time samples x(l) of the continu-
ous time waveform x(t) by applying the Discrete Fourier
Transform (DFT)
LDF
 T −1
1 −j L2πlm
Xm (n) = DF T {x(l)} = x(l)e DF T ,
LDF T
l=0
were LDF T denotes the DFT length, which equals the to-
tal number of subcarriers. Xm (n) denotes the transmitted
symbol at the mth subcarrier of the nth OFDM symbol.
Because the DFT is a linear operation, the time domain
BB model of subsequent impairments is transformed to a
set of subsequent impairments in the frequency domain.
For the lack of space, this property will only be briefly dis-
cussed, for a more detailed analysis the reader is referred
to the literature.
Assuming the duration of the channels impulse response
does not exceed the length of the cyclic prefix, the convo-
lution in the time domain (2) translates to a multiplication
with the channel coefficients in the frequency domain [6]:
Ym (n) = Xm (n)Hm (n) + Wm (n). (7)
The multiplication with samples of the phase error (6) in
the time domain translates to a cyclic convolution in the
frequency domain, resulting in inter-carrier interference
(ICI) [6]:
Ỹm (n) = Ym (n) ∗ Cm (n). (8)
Finally, the self-interference of the time domain BB sig-
(3) nal (5) translates to a mutual interference between pairs of
symmetric subcarriers [8]:
∗
Zm (n) = K1 Ỹm (n) + K2 Ỹ−m (n). (9)

z̃LO (t) = K1 e−j[2πfC t+c(t)] + K2 e+j[2πfC t+c(t)] . (4) Each set of frequency domain coefficients is determined by
the corresponding set of time domain samples:
By merging (1) and (4), the impact of an I/Q down-
conversion with a non-ideal complex LO can be described Hm (n) = DF T {h(l)} , (10)
by the following equivalent BB model: Wm (n) = DF T {w(l)} , (11)
∗ −jc(l)
z(t) = LP {r(t)z̃LO (t)} = K1 ỹ(t) + K2 ỹ (t), (5) Cm (n) = DF T {e }. (12)
 III. P REAMBLE DESIGN
A proper digital signal processing is required in order
to reconstruct the transmitted symbols Xm (n) from the re-
ceived (distorted) symbols Zm (n). This reconstruction can
be done by applying the inverse operations of the subse-
quent error effects (as shown in Fig. 2) in reverse order. In
this paper we focus on the first step of the correction: the
compensation of the I/Q imbalance. The subsequent com-
pensation of the CFO (or more generally: phase errors) and
the channel equalization is beyond the scope of this paper,
see for example [6].
Prior to the compensation, the parameters of each dis-
tortion have to be estimated. The use of predetermined
OFDM symbols, such as a preamble, is a very common
technique for allowing a proper parameter estimation. By
comparing the symbols before and after the distortion, the
parameters of the distortion can be estimated. However,
any I/Q imbalance parameter estimation based on refer-
ence symbols suffers from the fact, that the known trans-
mitted symbols are corrupted (with unknown parameters)
prior to the I/Q imbalance, as one can see from Fig. 2.
These problems are avoided by applying blind estima-
tion techniques. The term blind indicates, that actual val-
ues of the transmitted symbols Xm (n) are unknown to the
receiver. Instead, the estimation is done based on the re-
ceived, corrupted symbols Zm (n) only. Therefore, the
goal of in this paper is to derive general design constraints
of the preamble, such that a robust I/Q imbalance param-
eter estimation is possible even in the presence of a noisy,
frequency-selective fading channel and phase errors. The
estimation is reference-based in the sense, that it is done
based on a fixed, predetermined preamble. At the same
time, the estimation is blind in the sense, that the reference
symbols are unknown to the receiver.
A. Blind I/Q imbalance parameter estimation
Let us assume, the receiver has collected a set of cor-
rupted symbols Zm (n), Z−m (n) originating from one or
multiple pairs of symmetric subcarriers m and −m. Based
on this collected data, a two-step parameter estimation is
possible [8]. In a first step, the product
 
m∈M n∈N Zm (n)Z−m (n)
K̂1 K̂2 =   ∗ 2
. (13)
m∈M n∈N |Zm (n) + Z−m (n)|
is estimated. M denotes the chosen subset of M (positive)
subcarrier indices, N denotes the chosen subset of N sam-
ple time indices. In a second step, the estimated product
ist split into the desired estimates of the I/Q imbalance pa-
rameters
1 + α̂ − j β̂ 1 − α̂ − j β̂
K̂1 = , K̂2 = , (14)
2 2
where
β̂ = −2 Im{K̂1 K̂2 },
 (15)
α̂ = 1 − β̂ 2 − 4 Re{K̂1 K̂2 }.
Re {·} and Im {·} denote the real and the imaginary part,
respectively.
B. Design constraints
It has been shown in [9], that the accuracy of the pa-
rameter estimation, and therefore the performance of the
I/Q imbalance compensation, is very closely related to the
term
 
= Ỹm (n)Ỹ−m (n). (16)
m∈M n∈N
For  → 0, the estimation approaches the desired value:
K̂1 K̂2 → K1 K2 . Originally, it has been suggested
to perform the parameter estimation based on uncorre-
lated subcarriers, such as data subcarriers [8]. With
E{Ỹm (n)Ỹ−m (n)} = 0 at the evaluated pairs of subcar-
riers,  approaches zero for large values of M and/or N .
Equivalently, if the parameter estimation is done based
on a preamble, the symbols Xm (n) of the preamble should
be designed such that (16) is small for arbitrary distortions
due to the channel and due to phase errors. In order to
derive reasonable constraints for the preamble design, we
consider a noise-free frequency-selective fading channel
and no phase errors. In this case, (16) results in:
 
= Xm (n)X−m (n)Hm (n)H−m (n). (17)
m∈M n∈N
Obviously,  = 0 can be ensured for arbitrary realizations
of the channel coefficients Hm (n), if the following condi-
tion holds:
Xm (n)X−m (n) = 0 ∀ m ∈ M, n ∈ N. (18)
In other words, a perfect I/Q imbalance parameter estima-
tion can be ensured, if at least one symbol Xm (n) and/or
X−m (n) is zero for each m, n. Therefore, (18) is referred
to as the Zero Subcarrier design constraint.
While the introduction of zero subcarriers is extremely
advantageous for the I/Q imbalance parameter estimation,
zero subcarriers should be avoided from the channel esti-
mation point of view. Therefore, alternative design con-
straints are required, which avoid the introduction of zero
subcarriers. Most practical OFDM systems are dimen-
sioned such that the channel coefficients Hm (n) change
very slowly in time (index n) and frequency (index m).
Using this property, the set M of subcarrier indices is split
into P subsets of mutually exclusive subsets M1 . . . MP
and the set N of time indices is split into Q subsets of mu-
tually exclusive subsets N1 . . . NQ , such that the channel
coefficients are approximately constant within each subset:
+ −
Hm (n) ≈ Hp,q , H−m (n) ≈ Hp,q ∀ m ∈ Mp , n ∈ Nq .
(19)
By using (17), it can be easily shown, that  ≈ 0 for arbi-
+
trary channel coefficients Hp,q −
, Hp,q , if
 
Xm (n)X−m (n) = 0 ∀ Mp , Nq (20)
m∈Mp n∈Nq
holds for each subset. In contrast to (18), (20) can be ful-
filled without the introduction of zero subcarriers. There-
fore, (20) is referred to as the Complementary Subsets de-
sign constraint.
 −15
Preamble A: Block of Zeros Preamble A @ AWGN
1.4 −20 Preamble A @ ETSI−A
Xm

Preamble A @ ETSI−B
−25 Preamble B @ AWGN
−1.4
Preamble B @ ETSI−A
−30 −20 −10 0 10 20 30 −30 Preamble B @ ETSI−B
Preamble C @ AWGN
Preamble C @ ETSI−A

Mean GC [dB]
Preamble B: Interlaced Zeros −35
Preamble C @ ETSI−B
1.4
Xm

−40

−1.4 −45
−30 −20 −10 0 10 20 30
−50

Preamble C: Complementary Subsets

−55
1
Xm

−60
−1
−65
−30 −20 −10 0 10 20 30 −10 0 10 20 30 40 50 60
Subcarrier index m Channel SNR [dB]

Fig. 3. 3 exemplary preambles, which were generated under different Fig. 4. Performance of the parameter estimation under different channel
design constraints (see text) conditions (g=1.05, φ=5◦ )

IV. D ESIGN EXAMPLES ing continuous-time Peak-to-Average-Power-Ratio1 (CT-

The general design constraints derived in the previous
section shall be be illustrated by design examples. The
exemplary preambles, which are generated and evaluated
in this section, are based on the parameters of the IEEE
802.11a WLAN standard. Each preamble consists of only
one OFDM symbol (N =1), which is composed of 64 sub-
carriers, including 52 used subcarriers and 12 zero subcar-
riers. The preamble design aims on a suitable definition of
the symbols of the 52 used subcarriers. Our analysis will
be based on the following 3 design examples (see Fig. 3):
1) Preamble A: is the most simple approach based on
the zero subcarrier design constraint by setting all nega-
tive subcarriers to zero. Obviously, the drawback of such
a design is, that no channel estimation can be done for the
negative subcarriers.
2) Preamble B: follows the zero subcarrier design con-
straint as well. However, in contrast to preamble A, the
zero subcarriers are equally distributed over both negative
and positive subcarrier indices. The design is chosen such
that the positive subcarrier is set to zero for even subcar-
rier indices, while the negative subcarrier is set to zero for
odd subcarrier indices. Hence, the channel estimation can
be performed on equally distributed subcarrier indices over
the whole band of used subcarriers.
3) Preamble C: avoids the need for zero subcarriers
by following the design constraint of complementary sub-
sets. The set of M =26 subcarrier indices is split into
P =13 subsets. The small subset size (2 pairs of subcarri-
ers in each subset) ensures high robustness against strongly
frequency-selective fading channels. At the same time,
preamble C enables a channel estimation for each individ-
ual subcarrier.
For simplicity, we used BPSK modulated symbols in
all non-zero subcarriers. The introduction of additional
zero subcarriers in the preambles A and B is compen- √ shown in Fig. 4.
sated by scaling the BPSK symbols by a factor of 2.
This scaling ensures, that the resulting OFDM symbol
power is the same for all 3 preambles. The actual val-
ues of the BPSK symbols are chosen such that the result-
PAPR) is less than 6 dB. For reference, the CT-PAPR of
the regular IEEE 802.11a preamble is 4.13 dB.
A. Performance evaluation
In order to evaluate the performance of the I/Q imbal-
ance parameter estimation, a reasonable quality measure is
required. Following the analysis framework presented in
[9], we define the normalized image power gain
 
 K K̂ ∗ − K ∗ K̂ 2
 2 1 1 2
GC =   , (21)
 K1 K̂1∗ − K2 ∗ K̂2 
which measures the residual error after (potentially imper-
fect) I/Q imbalance compensation. GC is the inverse of
what is sometimes referred to as image rejection ratio.
B. Simulation results
We start our investigations with the case of no phase er-
ror. Figure 4 shows the performance of the parameter esti-
mation under different channel conditions. In the presence
of an AWGN channel, all preambles show the same perfor-
mance. Clearly, the mean estimation error (expressed by
GC ) reaches arbitrary low values as the Signal-to-Noise-
Ratio (SNR) of the channel raises.
For low SNR’s the mean estimation error is upper
bounded. In this case, each subcarrier is dominated by the
additive channel noise. Because the additive noise in each
subcarrier can be treated as uncorrelated, this scenario cor-
responds to a parameter estimation based on uncorrelated
subcarriers, as originally proposed in [8]. According to
the theoretical analysis in [9], the resulting expected GC is
-20.2 dB, which matches exactly with in simulation results
1 The CT-PAPR denotes the PAPR of the OFDM symbol in the analog
domain. In our simulations the CT-PAPR has been approximated by an
8 times oversampling of the (discrete) time-domain representation of the
evaluated preambles.

−20
−30
−40
Mean GC [dB]
−50
−60
−70
Preamble A
Preamble B
Preamble C
−80
−1 −0.5 0 0.5
Normalized CFO Δf / fsc
Fig. 5. Performance of the parameter estimation as a function of the
carrier frequency offset (ETSI-A channel @ 80dB SNR, g=1.05, φ=5◦ )
Next, a frequency-selective fading channel is considered
by using the ETSI channel models A and B [1]. Despite
a small degradation compared to the AWGN channel, the
general trend of a linearly decreasing estimation error with
a raising SNR is maintained. The only exception is pream-
ble C, which exhibits an error floor for high SNR’s due to
the approximation in (19). The coherency bandwidth of
channel ETSI-B is smaller than the coherency bandwidth
of channel ETSI-A, resulting in a higher error floor.
The performance of the parameter estimation is strongly
affected by phase errors. Figure 5 shows the impact of
a carrier frequency offset (CFO) for an ETSI-A channel.
The absolute CFO Δf is normalized by the subcarrier
spacing fSC . As for a frequency-selective channel, the
zero-based preambles A and B show the best robustness
against a non-zero CFO. The robustness can be increased
by ”grouping” as many zeros as possible (here: preamble
A). This property can be explained by interpreting the CFO
as inter-carrier interference (ICI). For typical values of the
CFO, most of the ICI is caused by neighboring subcarri-
ers. Hence, a desirable zero subcarrier is less affected by
the CFO (i.e. its value remains close to zero) if most of its
neighboring subcarriers are zero subcarriers as well.
Finally, the impact on the resulting symbol error rate
(SER) is considered. The frame structure is based on the
IEEE 802.11a WLAN standard. Each transmitted frame
is corrupted by the channel, the CFO and the I/Q imbal-
ance. Normalized CFO values of 0, 5%, and 10% (corre-
sponding to 0, 16 kHz, and 31 kHz absolute CFO) were
used. For each frame, the I/Q imbalance parameters are
estimated based on only one OFDM symbol (preamble A,
B, or C, respectively). Using this estimate, a time-domain
I/Q imbalance compensation is applied to the subsequent
payload OFDM symbols, followed by a CFO correction
and a channel equalization. The CFO correction and the
channel equalization are assumed to be perfect, such that
the I/Q imbalance is the only error source which degrades
the system performance.
Figure 6 shows that the I/Q imbalance can be perfectly
compensated based on each of the 3 preambles, if no CFO
0
10
With I/Q imbalance
−1 (no compensation)
10
Symbol Error Rate
−2
10
−3 Preamble A @ cfo=0
10 Preamble A @ cfo=5%
Preamble A @ cfo=10%
Preamble B @ cfo=0
−4
Preamble B @ cfo=5%
10 Preamble B @ cfo=10%
Preamble C @ cfo=0
No I/Q imbalance
Preamble C @ cfo=5%
Preamble C @ cfo=10%
1 10 20 30 40 50 60
SNR [dB]
Fig. 6. Error rates of 64-QAM symbols with and without digital com-
pensation of the I/Q imbalance (ETSI-A channel, g=1.05, φ=5◦ )
is present. The performance is slightly degraded due to a
non-zero CFO. However, the error rate is still significantly
reduced compared to the reference case of no I/Q imbal-
ance compensation. The accuracy of the parameter esti-
mation (and consequently the performance of the compen-
sation) can be further increased by averaging over multiple
received preamble symbols in time.
V. C ONCLUSIONS
General constraints for the preamble design in OFDM
systems have been derived, which allow a low-complexity
I/Q imbalance parameter estimation. The evaluation of ex-
emplary preambles, which were generated using these con-
straints, indicate sufficient robustness to both channel dis-
tortions and phase errors, such as carrier frequency offset.
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