A New Data-Aided Synchronization Scheme for FBMC-OQAM Systems

Although the Filter bank multicarrier with offset quadrature amplitude modulation (FBMC-OQAM) systems are robust against double selective fading channels, it unfortunately is still sensitive to timing offset and carrier frequency offset (CFO) errors. To solve this synchronization problem, in this paper, we propose a new data-aided timing and CFO synchronization scheme, that exploits the conjugate-symmetry property of a properly designed training sequence. In addition, the sliding window algorithm is applied to the proposed scheme to further improve synchronization performance in multipath fading channels. Simulation results verify that the proposed scheme achieves good performance in AWGN channel and multipath fading channels, in terms of timing capture probability, minimum square-error (MSE) of timing offset and CFO estimation and bit error rate (BER) versus signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Moreover, it can achieve timing and frequency synchronization independently in steps with relatively lower implementation complexity.