Synchronization Receiver for OFDM-Based FM Broadcasting Systems

The digital radio mondiale (DRM) consortium is now preparing to test and verify the design of DRM plus, prior to standardization, produce a revision to the existing DRM system specification. This paper presents an overview of the OFDM-based DRM system, planned to operate in FM bands, utilizing important receiver aspects, such as timing and frequency synchronization, which can provide benefits to the overall system performance. In particular, algorithms are devised or selected for the sequential estimation of symbol timing and carrier frequency offsets by exploiting the structure of the data and pilot. The performance of using the proposed algorithms is demonstrated via several examples in the channel models for FM bands.