Performance Improvement of Non-Data-Aided Feedforward Symbol Timing Estimation Using the "Better Than" Raised-Cosine Pulse

It is known that the "better than" raised-cosine pulse has several advantages over the conventional raised-cosine pulse. In addition to the advantages previously reported, this letter reports that the "better than" raised-cosine pulse enables better performance of symbol timing estimation than the raised-cosine pulse. Both Cramer-Rao lower bounds and simulations of practical synchronizers show the superiority of the new pulse. The performance gain can be as much as 3.4 dB for a practical system.