A low-complexity frame synchronization and frequency offset compensation scheme for OFDM systems over fading channels

This paper presents a fast low-complexity synchronization scheme for orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems over fading channels. By utilizing the guard interval in OFDM signals, the frame synchronization and the frequency offset estimation are considered simultaneously. The implementation can be simplified by only using the sign bits of the in-phase and the quadrature components of the received OFDM signal for frame synchronization and frequency offset compensation. A frequency-offset independent frame synchronization algorithm is derived, and a low-complexity frequency offset estimator based on the synchronized correlator output is presented in this paper. Due to the subcarrier ambiguity in the guard-interval-based (GIB) frequency detector, the maximum correctable frequency range is limited to /spl plusmn/1/2 of the subcarrier spacing. In this paper, we also present a new frequency acquisition scheme that can solve the subcarrier ambiguity problem and extend the frequency acquisition range to nearly a half of the useful OFDM signal bandwidth.