Analysis of Blind Frame Recognition and Synchronization Based on Sync Word Periodicity

Blind recognition of communication parameters has been studied for various applications including cognitive radios, non-cooperative communications, electronic warfare, etc. In this article, the identification of frame information, such as frame length and synchronization word (SW), and frame synchronization, is addressed over the wiretap channel, where no prior information of the frame structure is available, but only the existence of a repeated SW is known. Modifying the previous study, we propose two blind frame recognition and synchronization algorithms based on the correlation between two distinct windows of the received signal as well as the mean of periodic samples. The algorithms run in two steps. A multiple of frame length is estimated via the correlation and then other frame parameters are acquired using the mean of periodic samples with the estimate. Asymptotic analysis of the first algorithm shows that the error probability of estimation vanishes as the received data increases both in noiseless and noisy transmissions. The second algorithm improves the performance in the limited received data scenario. Simulation results as well as complexity analysis of the proposed algorithm are also shown.