Comparison of Non-Data-Aided Feedforward Symbol Timing Estimation with "Better Than" Raised Cosine and Raised Cosine Pulse Shapings

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 paper 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.