Timing estimation for OFDM systems by using a correlation sequence of preamble

In this paper, we propose a novel timing estimation method for orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems. The most common approaches in estimating timing use correlation by using a given preamble. Thus, the estimation performance is directly dependent on the specific preamble type. The proposed algorithm estimates the timing by using a simple circular shift operation of the given preamble at the receiver. For this reason, the proposed method can be used for any of the OFDM systems regardless of their preamble structures. The simulation results investigated in this paper reveal that the proposed method remarkably increases the estimation performance by more than 5 dB in terms of the mean squared error compared to conventional methods. We also consider the computational complexity of the methods and introduce a simple structure to reduce the computational burden of the proposed method.