A synchronization scheme based on partial Zadoff-Chu sequences for cooperative MIMO OFDM systems

In this paper, we propose a novel preamble design of partial Zadoff-Chu sequences, along with a synchronization scheme, for cooperative MIMO OFDM systems. In our preamble design, the training signals of cooperating terminals are well separated from each other in both time domain and frequency domain to suppress their mutual interference in both domains, whereas they are only separated in either of the two domains in existing preamble designs. The time-domain separation feature enables joint estimation of multiple propagation delays and carrier frequency offsets (CFOs) without extra bandpass filters for training signal separation; the frequency-domain separation feature, on the other hand, is beneficial to integral CFO acquisition and channel estimation. To effectively reduce computational complexity as well as to maintain satisfactory performance, we design a proper correlation window size for the proposed synchronization scheme. Simulation results verify the superiority of the proposed approach over existing synchronization schemes for cooperative MIMO OFDM systems.