An Efficient Joint Timing and Frequency Offset Estimation for OFDM Systems

This paper presents a new joint frame synchronization and frequency offset estimation algorithm for orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems as a modification to Zhang´s method (Zhang et al., 2005). By designing a new training preamble weighted by PN sequence, the timing estimator is improved (at least 3dB with low SNR). By estimating time offset first, the computational load is greatly reduced with no loss in frequency offset estimation accuracy. The performance of the proposed method is evaluated by computer simulations in terms of timing error rate (TER) together with computational complexity.