Quasi-maximum likelihood initial downlink synchronization for IEEE 802.16m

We consider initial downlink synchronization for the emerging IEEE 802.16m standard. Such synchronization involves estimation of the carrier frequency offset, signal timing, and the index of “Primary Advanced Preamble” (PA-Preamble) over a multipath channel. We first give a brief overview of some relevant signal properties in IEEE 802.16m. These properties are rather different from other recent standards to the point of needing a new synchronization algorithm. We develop a synchronization method based on the maximum likelihood (ML) principle. It turns out that the multipath channel response is also estimated along the way. The resulting method is considered quasi-ML because some approximations are used to simplify computation. Simulation results are presented to illustrate its performance.