A Robust Symbol Timing Synchronization Scheme for OFDM Systems Applied in a Vehicular Network

This paper presents a novel timing synchronization scheme for orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing communication systems by leveraging the phase shift caused by the timing error and the power difference between subcarriers. The proposed scheme is applied in the physical layer of vehicular ad hoc networks using the IEEE 802.11p standard. The proposed work joints three different estimators to present a robust synchronizer. The results demonstrate that the proposed estimators greatly improve the performance of the communication system and outperform other approaches in terms of the mean square error and the bit error rate. The estimators can either work as totally blind or data-aided using the preamble field of the IEEE 802.11p.