Preamble structure-based timing synchronization for IEEE 802.16e

This paper proposes timing synchronization for IEEE 802.16e OFDMA downlink. The proposed scheme utilizes the conjugate symmetry property of preamble structure. Therefore, prior knowledge of actual transmitted preamble type is not required. Considering hardware complexity, this paper proposes a new single correlation function for 114 different structures of preamble in 802.16e OFDMA. As a consequence, this method eliminates need to cross correlation with all possible preamble. Comparing to conventional method, the correlation produces very high sharp peak that easy the determination of the start of preamble result. The simulation results show that the proposed synchronization method is suitable for multipath environment. Under ITU-B pedestrian channel, our proposed method can correctly identify all preambles at SNR larger than -2dB, and under ITU-A vehicular channel, our proposed method can achieve reasonable performance at SNR larger than -1dB.