ML symbol synchronization for general MIMO-OFDM systems in unknown frequency-selective fading channels

This paper proposes a new synchronization algorithm for a general MIMO-OFDM system over frequency selective fading channels, based on maximum-likelihood principle. By knowing the exact place of the training sequence packet, we are able to align the start of FFT window within the OFDM symbol. Symbol timing joint with channel estimation is performed in this paper in order to find the exact place of the beginning of the training sequence. In addition, loss in system performance due to synchronization error is derived for MIMO systems and used as a performance criterion. We provide simulation results to illustrate that the performance of the proposed algorithm is quite satisfying.