Timing and Frequency Synchronization Issues for Narrowband Wireless Communication Systems

Peimin Chi, 2002 M.S. (advisor: Robert W. Brodersen)

    Due to its relative low cost compared to wired systems, the deployment of wireless communication systems is expected to take place rapidly to satisfy the everincreasing demand for ubiquitous personal information access. Future wireless systems are expected to deliver integrated data services like voice, video, and multimedia at high speed and low cost to end customers. To build such systems, collaborations of many people from different technical backgrounds are clearly need. Smart algorithms from communications theorists, optimal architectures from system engineers, and efficient implementations from circuit designers are just some of the key ingredients needed.
    The work presented here focuses on the synchronization aspects of narrowband digital communications receivers. (For wideband systems like OFDM [19], [1], [2], [4] and [15] provide excellent materials related to synchronization.) In most digital communication textbooks, the topic of synchronization is only discussed briefly or not at all. Analyses such as BER calculations are done based on the assumption of perfect synchronization, while this provides an ideal model for ease of analysis, it also gives the false implication that synchronization is a very trivial task and does not deserve much research effort. In actuality, synchronization mechanism has a direct impact on the error performance of the digital receiver and considerable amount of design effort is spent to solve synchronization problems.