On the optimality of metrics for coarse frame synchronization in OFDM: a comparison

Commonly, a repetition preamble is proposed as a burst training sequence to allow frame- and carrier frequency synchronization in digital transmission over unknown, severely dispersive channels. In this paper the preamble is composed of one repeated data-carrying-and therefore random-orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) symbol. The current literature suggests several metrics to detect repetition preambles for coarse frame synchronization so we provide a ranking of four different metrics proposed by Chevillat, Maiwald and Ungerboeck (1987), Sandell, van de Beek and Borjesson (1995), Schmidl and Cox (see IEEE Trans. on Commun., vol.45, no.12, p.1613-21, 1997), and Keller and Hanzo (see Proceedings of the International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications (PIMRC'96), p.963-67, Taipei, Taiwan, 1996) via a simulative assessment. Furthermore, a probability-based motivation for the metric of Chevillat et al is given.