Use of the DFT for synchronization in packetized data communications

A novel synchronization technique suitable for packetized, non-constant envelope data transmission is proposed. A DFT-based closed loop system is used to acquire and recover the carrier phase and the symbol timing at the receiver by use of a preamble waveform which consists of sets of harmonically related sinusoids. The phase information extracted from the DFT is used in a linear regression algorithm to obtain an estimate of phase and timing. An algorithm optimized for frequency-selective fading channels by adding a weighting factor in the regression algorithm is also presented