Temporal Synchronization of MIMO Wireless Communication in the Presence of Interference

In wireless communications systems that potentially operate in interference, acquisition and temporal alignment of a transmitted signal by a receiver can be the most fragile component of the link. In this paper, synchronization detection in the presence of interference for multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communication is discussed. Here, synchronization indicates signal acquisition and timing estimation at the receiver, and is formulated as a binary statistical hypothesis test. Transmit sequences from multiple antennas are received by multiple antennas in noisy environments with spatially correlated noise (interference). Flat-fading and frequency-selective channel models for both the interference and signal of interest are considered. By applying well-known multiple antenna approaches to the MIMO synchronization problem, a number of new synchronization test statistics are introduced. These test statistics are motivated by minimum-mean-square-error (MMSE) beamformers, generalized-likelihood ratio test (GLRT), least-squared (LS) channel estimation, and spatial invariance. Test statistics appropriate for orthogonal-frequency-division-multiplexing (OFDM) systems are considered, including test statistics that take advantage of cyclic prefixes and of pilot sequences within an OFDM symbol. Performances of various test statistics in terms of probability of missing detection for some probability of a false detection are shown to vary by multiple orders of magnitude in the presence of interference.