Replica Correlation-Based Synchronization with Low Complexity and Frequency Offset Immunity

Abstract

This paper investigates the multifarious nature of the long-term evolution (LTE) scheme and that of the modified LTE scheme for symbol timing synchronization (STS). This investigation allows us to propose a new replica correlation-based STS scheme to overcome the inherent weaknesses of the other two schemes. The proposed STS signal combines a gold sequence and a half sine wave in the time domain, whereas conventional STS signals specify either binary sequences or complex sequences in the time domain or in the frequency domain. In the proposed scheme, a sufficient correlation property is realized by the gold sequence, and robustness against the frequency offset (FO) is achieved through the sine wave. Compared to the existing LTE-related schemes, the proposed scheme can better achieve immunity to FO and reduction in detector complexity, as well as a low peak-to-average power ratio and a low detection error rate. Performance evaluations through analysis and simulation are provided in the paper to demonstrate these attributes.