A new method for simultaneous fine time synchronization and frequency offset estimation in OFDM with simple hardware

The paper presents a new method to provide simultaneous time and frequency offset estimation that operates in the frequency domain by analyzing the modulus and angle of a synchronization symbol. When compared to those estimators based on computational intensive time-correlations, the main advantage of the proposed estimator is in the hardware implementation. In the proposed method, no additional hardware is required, as the already existing FFT processor and the polar coordinates translator (typically a CORDIC processor) used for OFDM normal operation are reused in the synchronization phase. Simulation results are presented using different conditions and channel models showing a negligible decrease in performance when compared to other methods.

I. Introduction

Since the first OFDM system was proposed in 1971 by Weinstein and Ebert [1] it has been considered for many broadband applications including wired (ADSL and VDSL) and wireless applications (broadcasting networks DVB/DAB), and wireless LAN's (IEEE-WLAN-802.11a and ETSI-HIPERLAN/2). In addition, it is likely to be used in the future for power line communication systems, commonly called PLC, normalized by the ETSI-PLT technical body [2].