A Novel Timing Estimation Algorithm for OFDM Systems

Symbol timing estimation is one of key problems in OFDM systems. In this paper a new symbol timing estimation algorithm based on a training symbol is proposed. The study shows that the new algorithm is not affected by large carrier frequency offset basically. And it also has better performance than the previous timing estimation algorithm in terms of wrong probability. Through adopting this algorithm the timing error is shortened to a half of the sample time interval. Furthermore when combining with the conventional frequency offset estimation algorithm, only a training symbol is needed to complete joint acquisition of symbol timing and carrier frequency offset.