Adaptive OFDM synchronization using quadratic search step sizes

Conventional blind joint symbol time offset (STO) and carrier frequency offset (CFO) estimators for orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems are high in computational complexity, which increases power consumption and reduces the lifetime of the communications device. In this paper, a novel, real-time, low complexity, blind, and adaptive synchronization algorithm for OFDM systems is presented. It is shown through simulation that the proposed estimator performs better than previously proposed adaptive and conventional non-adaptive algorithms in terms of mean squared error (MSE) once the algorithm has converged, has quicker convergence times than previously proposed adaptive algorithms, and is robust to both small and large changes in STO.