On Preamble Detection in Packet-Based Wireless Networks

Performance bounds on detecting a preamble embedded at the start of every packet for communication over an additive white Gaussian noise channel are derived. The preamble sequence consists of blocks of spreading sequences whose length is at most the coherence time of the channel. These blocks are differentially combined. A correlation-based detection is employed to locate the boundaries of the preamble. Simulation results closely follow the analysis. Furthermore, the effects of frequency offset on the system performance are discussed