On a hybrid preamble/soft-output demapper approach for time synchronization for IEEE 802.15.6 narrowband WBAN

In this paper, we present a maximum likelihood (ML) based time synchronization algorithm for Wireless Body Area Networks (WBAN). The proposed technique takes advantage of soft information retrieved from the soft demapper for the time delay estimation. This algorithm has a low complexity and is adapted to the frame structure specified by the IEEE 802.15.6 standard [1] for the narrowband systems. Simulation results have shown good performance which approach the theoretical mean square error limit bound represented by the Cramer Rao Bound (CRB).