A novel scheme for symbol timing in OFDM WLAN systems

We focus our research on the coarse symbol timing synchronization technique in wireless local area network (WLAN) COFDM systems. An analysis is made on the difference between the symbol timing synchronization technique in continuous mode transmission systems such as DVB-T and the burst mode transmission systems such as WLAN. A new method to do coarse symbol timing in time domain is proposed. Simulations show that it has distinct advantage over the conventional maximum likelihood (ML) method under multi-path wireless channel conditions. The corresponding field programmable gate array circuit through test in HDTV prototype in Team of Engineering Expert Group (TEEG) proves that the new method is not only suitable for burst mode but also suitable for continuous mode transmission systems.