Frequency offset and symbol timing recovery in flat-fading channels: a cyclostationary approach

Abstract

Two open-loop algorithms are developed for estimating jointly frequency offset and symbol timing of a linearly modulated waveform transmitted through a frequency-flat fading channel. The methods exploit the received signal's second-order cyclostationarity and, with respect to existing solutions: (1) they take into account the presence of time-selective fading effects; (2) they do not need training data; (3) they do not rely on the Gaussian assumption of the complex equivalent low-pass channel process; and (4) they are tolerant to additive stationary noise of any color or distribution. Performance analysis of the proposed methods using Monte Carlo simulations, unifications, and comparisons with existing approaches are also reported.