A Novel Timing Synchronization Metric for Low-Voltage OFDM Powerline Communication System

Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) is considered as an effective method for overcoming problems such as noise, multi-path propagation and frequency selective fading in low voltage power-line communication (PLC). However, OFDM system is sensitive to the error of synchronization. Accurate symbol timing and carrier frequency offset estimation are crucial to the PLC system based on OFDM. In this paper, a new metric rule was proposed for timing synchronization. The delay and correlation algorithms as well as the novel synchronization algorithm proposed were used in a realistic low voltage power line. The performances of three timing synchronization algorithms were compared. The proposed approach was independent of the frequency offset and robust to the multi-path fading channels. It is concluded that the proposed synchronization scheme well suits the PLC systems using OFDM signals via experiments.