A Short-burst Synchronization Method for Narrowband Wireless Communication Systems

This paper proposes a new burst synchronization method that improves transmission efficiency. This method suits narrowband wireless communications systems, whose traffic is dominated by short packets such as radio-frequency identification (RF-ID) information. In these systems, overhead symbols such as preamble and pilot symbols degrade the transmission efficiency. The proposed method eliminates preamble symbols and reserves pilot symbols for accurate burst synchronization. The proposed coded pilots enable frame acquisition, carrier recovery, and phase tracking to be achieved with coherent detection. Computer simulation results show that the proposed method achieves up to 26% better transmission efficiency, while achieving better packet error-rate performance than conventional methods