Joint time-frequency synchronization and channel estimation for FBMC

Preamble with repeated time domain blocks is a very common design for joint time and frequency synchronization in various communication systems and standards. While it is easy to design two or more repeated time domain blocks in orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) and some other systems, it is not straightforward to design filter bank multicarrier (FBMC) signal that has the repetition property in time domain, as FBMC modulation spreads one block of frequency domain signal into multiple blocks in time domain. In this paper, a new design is proposed for constructing repeated time domain blocks in FBMC. The preamble based on this design can be used for joint time-frequency synchronization and channel estimation as well. Extensive simulations are shown to verify the performance of the design.