A robust symbol timing strategy for cellular systems

Abstract

In cellular systems, establishing the initial symbol timing of potential preambles is the first step of a cell search. The envelope fluctuation of the downlink signal hinders the successful timing of conventional symbol timing methods. To solve this problem, a hybrid timing strategy is proposed with two novel detectors, namely the normalized replica-based detector and normalized differential detector. The strategy first detects all potential preambles via the normalized replica-based detector and then employs the normalized differential detector to verify the target preamble, which comes from the target cell and has the highest power. The strategy is unaffected by envelope fluctuation and has computational complexity comparable to that of conventional methods. Simulations and real-data tests show that the hybrid timing strategy is robust and practical for initial symbol timing.

Keywords

• Symbol timing
• Synchronization
• Preamble
• Cell search
• Cellular system
• Envelope fluctuation