Improved frame synchronization for mobile packet radio systems with standard VLSI synchronous input/output devices

An improved frame synchronization technique is proposed for mobile and portable packet radio systems which use standard VLSI synchronous input/output (SIO) hardware devices for data transmission. This technique overcomes the performance limitations inherent in the SIO 2-byte hardware frame sync function by using a multiple-byte marker and additional software for frame sync. When compared to systems using a dedicated multibyte hardware correlator external to the SIO, the analysis shows that the proposed software technique can achieve the same sync reliability, but requires a longer marker. Thus the proposed technique is considered attractive as a software upgrade to an existing system. For a specified bit error rate (BER) and acceptable false alarm probability, a tradeoff can be made of the cost of using additional marker bits needed by the proposed technique against the cost of a dedicated hardware correlator