A comparison of time and frequency synchronisation algorithms for the European DVB-T system

Abstract

In this paper a comparison of several time and frequency synchronisation algorithms for DVB-T is presented. The goal is to achieve a carrier frequency estimate with an error smaller than 1% of the subcarrier spacing and a timing estimate that avoids ISI in the receiver. Three joint coarse timing and fine frequency estimation algorithms are compared, where the results for the simplest one are similar to the ones for the others with more hardware complexity. The best results for coarse carrier frequency offset are obtained with a data-aided (DA) scheme using the fixed pilot tones. A new method is derived for fine timing estimation for one-path channels. Simulations have been performed for the DVB-T 2K system in three different channels.