Multi-User Frame Synchronization in Wireless Networks with Sporadic User Activity

Sensor networks have gained a lot of attention over the past years and it is expected that the future 5G standard will set communication specifications for the upcoming Internet of Things. Assuming a wireless network where multiple sensors communicate with a single receiving node, this paper will use Zadoff-Chu sequences as a preamble for channel estimation and multi-user activity identification in a sporadic user activity setup. A Neyman-Pearson algorithm detects active transmissions and determines the sampling instances at which the transmitted frame starts and ends. The algorithm was synthesized using High-Level Synthesis and finally implemented on the Nutaq ZeptoSDR.