Low complexity maximum likelihood estimation of time and frequency offset for DVB-T2

The Second generation Terrestrial Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB-T2) standard provides a specific symbol, called PI symbol, in order to facilitate initial time and frequency synchronisation by identifying the correct start of the frame. Several schemes, exploiting this symbol, have been devised to perform this particular function. In this paper, a modified maximum likelihood estimation for the time and frequency offset is derived to significantly reduce the complexity of the maximum likelihood algorithm, without sacrificing performance. The proposed scheme is robust against continuous wave (CW) interference. Moreover, post FFT time synchronisation is no longer required.