A Low Complexity Time Synchronization and Sector Identification Method for LTE System

Synchronization is an important issue for a communication system to decode the received symbols correctly. Basically, synchronization process includes the time and frequency offsets prediction and compensation. If there are Time Offset (TO) and Carrier Frequency Offset between the Transmitter (Tx) and Receiver (Rx), OFDM system will suffer the Inter-Symbol Interference and Inter-Carrier Interference that degrade the system performance dramatically. In this paper, we propose a low complexity time synchronization and sector identification (ID) method using the unique null sub-carrier feature of the Primary Synchronization Signal and the Second Synchronization Signal for the LTE system. Combined with the down-sampling technique, computer simulations and experimental results show that the proposed method can predict the TO and sector ID correctly and has the advantage of very low computational complexity.