Efficient OFDM Symbol Timing Estimator Using Power Difference Measurements

This paper presents an efficient blind symbol timing estimation scheme for orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) systems with constant modulus constellation. The proposed technique is designed to estimate symbol timing offsets by minimizing the power difference between subcarriers with similar indices over two consecutive OFDM symbols based on the assumption that the channel slowly changes over time. The proposed power difference estimator (PDE) is totally blind because it requires no prior information about the channel or the transmitted data. Monte Carlo simulation is used to assess the PDE performance in terms of the probability of correct timing estimate P_lock-in. Moreover, we propose a new performance metric denoted as the deviation from safe region (DSR). Simulation results have demonstrated that the PDE performs well in severe frequency-selective fading channels and outperforms the other considered estimators. The complexity of the PDE can be significantly reduced by incorporating a low-cost estimator to provide initial coarse timing information. The proposed PDE is realized using feedforward and early-late gate (ELG) configurations. The new PDE-ELG does not suffer from the self-noise problem inherent in other ELG estimators reported in the literature.