A novel preamble for OFDM symbol synchronization that can outperform PN-based preambles in narrowband channels

Abstract

A new preamble for correlation-based symbol synchronization schemes in narrowband channels is presented. While autocorrelation properties of Pseudo-noise (PN) sequence preambles make them very well suited for symbol synchronization in wideband channels, the same is not necessarily true in narrowband channels. In fact, a narrowband preamble that has a cross-correlation - between the input and output of the channel - with smaller side lobes than a PN-based preamble can lead to better symbol synchronization in narrowband channels. Such a preamble is presented along with simulation results showing the performance of a typical symbol synchronization scheme when using the proposed narrowband preamble vs. a PN-based preamble.