Data-aided frequency synchronization under interference limited conditions

Data-aided multi-user burst frequency synchronization under interference limited conditions is analyzed. It is assumed that a unique-word based synchronization mechanism is used to achieve synchronization. In a first approach this unique-word is assumed to be located at the beginning of the burst structure. The interference represents frequency-adjacent bursts that are coarsely time synchronous. This corresponds to a typical multi frequency (MF) TDMA system with co-channel interference (CCI) limited minimal frequency separation. A novel approach is analyzed to reduce the interference impact of the carrier offset estimation, applying interference cancellation iteratively to increase the estimation accuracy. We demonstrate improved frequency synchronization with this novel approach of iterative burst synchronization.