Initial Synchronization for 802.16e Downlink

In this paper, we propose an initial synchronization scheme for time and carrier frequency synchronization and cell identification in 802.16e OFDMA downlink. The proposed method does not require knowledge of actual transmitted preamble, but only utilizes the preamble structure and inverse Fourier transform properties to obtain time/frequency synchronization. Through simulations, we show that the proposed synchronization method is suitable in multipath as well as multicell environment. Although evaluated for IEEE 802.16e, the proposed method can also be used in other OFDM systems with similar signal properties.