Skip to main content

Robust OFDM Timing Synchronisation in Multipath Channels

Abstract

This paper addresses pre-FFT synchronisation for orthogonal frequency division multiplex (OFDM) under varying multipath conditions. To ensure the most efficient data transmission possible, there should be no constraints on how much of the cyclic prefix (CP) is occupied by intersymbol interference (ISI). Here a solution for timing synchronisation is proposed, that is, robust even when the strongest multipath components are delayed relative to the first arriving paths. In this situation, existing methods perform poorly, whereas the solution proposed uses the derivative of the correlation function and is less sensitive to the channel impulse response. In this paper, synchronisation of a DVB single-frequency network is investigated. A refinement is proposed that uses heuristic rules based on the maxima of the correlation and derivative functions to further reduce the estimate variance. The technique has relevance to broadcast, OFDMA, and WLAN applications, and simulations are presented which compare the method with existing approaches.

Publisher note

To access the full article, please see PDF

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to C. Williams.

Rights and permissions

Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Williams, C., McLaughlin, S. & Beach, M.A. Robust OFDM Timing Synchronisation in Multipath Channels. J Wireless Com Network 2008, 675048 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1155/2008/675048

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Revised:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1155/2008/675048

Keywords