Robust time-domain timing and frequency synchronization for OFDM systems

A robust and efficient technique for frame/symbol timing and carrier frequency synchronization in OFDM systems is presented. It uses a preamble consisting of only one training symbol with two identical parts to achieve reliable timing and frequency accuracy in the time-domain, over a wide frequency estimation range which can be up to half of the signal sampling frequency. Also, it has a low complexity which is adaptive to the degree of channel distortion. Computer simulations in the Rayleigh fading ISI channel show that the proposed method achieves superior performance to existing techniques in terms of timing and frequency accuracy. Also, its operation in the time-domain helps to achieve faster synchronization convergence.