Synchronization for TDS-OFDM over multipath fading channels

Time domain synchronous orthogonal frequency division multiplex (TDS-OFDM) is an effective multi-carrier modulation scheme to improve the spectrum efficiency. However, conventional synchronization algorithm based on the correlation property of the time-domain pseudo-noise (PN) sequence may not work well over severe multipath fading channels when large carrier frequency offset (CFO) exits. In this paper, a robust synchronization algorithm is proposed where the PN sequence in the frame head is considered as a cyclic prefix (CP) OFDM training symbol. The time-domain slide auto-correlation based on the cyclic structure of the PN sequence is adopted for timing and fine CFO estimation, while in the frequency domain, a differential correlation is applied for large CFO estimation. Simulations demonstrate that the proposed method could achieve the satisfactory performance over multipath fading channels. In addition, to reduce the implementation complexity, the frame head of the TDS-OFDM system is preferred to be binary PN sequences in the frequency domain with cyclic structure in the time domain.