A technique to determine number and locations of frame synchronization pilot carriers in pilot-based OFDM systems

The generation of frame synchronization waveforms with desired autocorrelation properties is addressed for OFDM systems that use pilot tones for frame synchronization. A genetic algorithm (GA) is proposed to search for good subcarrier locations for frame synchronization pilots. The performance of the generated synchronization waveforms is evaluated by a simulated OFDM system and it is demonstrated that the generated waveforms achieve the desired frame synchronization performance. It is shown that the GA converges to a good solution much faster than a random search when the GA parameters are properly chosen. The best side peak level suppression for a given number of carriers is also investigated.