A symbol timing recovery algorithm of M-PSK signals for burst modem applications with small packet size

Feedforward symbol timing recovery techniques are particularly important for initial acquisition in burst modems. However, these techniques either have large calculation burden or sensitive to frequency offsets. In this paper, we proposed an efficient symbol timing recovery algorithm of MPSK signals named OMQ (Ordered Maximum power using Quadratic approximation partially) algorithm which is based on the Quadratic Approximation (QA) algorithm. We used ordered statistic sorting method to reduce the computational complexity further, meanwhile maximum mean power principle was used to decrease frequency offset sensitivity. The proposed algorithm adopts estimation-down sampling structure which is suitable for small packet size transmission. The results show that, while comparing with the QA algorithm, the computational complexity is reduced by 75% at most when 8 samples per symbol are used. The proposed algorithm shows better performance in terms of the jitter variance and sensitivity to frequency offsets.