A Simplified Timing Synchronization Algorithm for OFDM Systems

Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is an important technology for high-speed data transmission by virtue of its high spectral efficiency and robustness to multipath fading. These advantages can be achieved only with good synchronization both in time and frequency domain. For time synchronization, the cross-correlation based scheme can be combined with autocorrelation one to mitigate the ambiguity of the peak value while keeping a low computational complexity. Based on this structure, a simplified timing synchronization algorithm based on autocorrelation is presented in this paper. The symbol or frame timing is found by searching for a symbol in which the first half is identical to the second half in the time domain. The complexity is reduced by processing every Delta d samples rather than every sample. The probability of missing the training sequence and false detection is analyzed in AWGN channel. And the simulation results show that the complexity can be reduced effectively.