On the benefit of location and channel state information for synchronization in 3GPP-LTE

Abstract

Interference is a performance limiting factor for both reliable data estimation and synchronization, especially at the cell edge of wireless communications systems targeting a frequency reuse factor of one. In this paper we address time synchronization algorithms applicable to the beyond 3G standard 3GPP-LTE. To get rid of the interference problem, multi-link synchronization methods are proposed, which exploit information about the mobile station position and the channel state. Simulations, investigating the time synchronization performance for the S-SCH of an 3GPP-LTE downlink FDD frame, show that the combination of both location and channel state information provide remarkable timing performance gains at the cell border compared to single-link synchronization.