Timing synchronization for Ultra-wideband (UWB) Multi-band OFDM systems

An algorithm based on distinguishing the first significant multipath (FTA) is proposed to address the critical issue of symbol timing synchronization in Ultra wideband (UWB) Multi-band OFDM (MB-OFDM) systems. The algorithm attempts to locate the frame synchronization sequence and pinpoint the exact start of the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) window by first accumulating multipath energies and then discerning for first significant multipath components through threshold comparison between consecutive accumulated energy samples. The mean squared error (MSE) of the timing estimation and the synchronization probability are used as performance evaluation criteria. A total of 100 UWB channel realizations, as proposed by IEEE 802.15 Channel Modeling sub-committee, for each channel model (CM) 1: line-of-sight for 0-4m and CM2: non-line-of-sight for 04m are each simulated with 100,000 noisy realizations per threshold. The MSE is orders of magnitude lower compared to conventional OFDM-extended correlation methods. Synchronization probabilities reach 81% for UWB CMI and 50% for CM2 under a typical signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of 17 dB for high data rate applications.