Symbol Timing and Carrier Frequency Recovery Based on Entropy Minimization

This paper presents a new entropy minimization criterion for both symbol timing and carrier frequency recovery for wireless receivers. Synchronization is achieved by minimizing the entropy estimated from the eye diagram and the constellation diagram. Key implementation details are addressed toward the realization of entropy-based synchronization algorithms. In addition, the performance is evaluated in controlled conditions. It is shown that, as an alternative to the maximum likelihood criterion, entropy minimization has great potential and offers certain advantages for synchronization in wireless communication, particularly for pulse shaping filters with small excess bandwidth, as well as in multipath fading channels.