A robust timing synchronization scheme in multiple antenna systems with Doppler frequency shifts

We propose a timing synchronization scheme for a dual antenna system in Rayleigh-fading environments. Instead of assuming the channel gain to be constant during the training duration, we consider the time-variant nature of the multiplicative distortions and formulate them with linear combinations of eigenfunctions. Then, we derive a formula to find the maximum-likelihood estimation of the channel timing and simulate the performance with both ideal and nonideal channel state information. The results show that this approach outperforms the conventional ones especially when the Doppler spread is severe.