Timing and Carrier Synchronization in Wireless Communication Systems: A Survey and Classification of Research in the Last 5 Years

Timing and carrier synchronization is a fundamental requirement for any wireless communication system to work properly. Timing synchronization is the process by which a receiver node determines the correct instants of time at which to sample the incoming signal. Carrier synchronization is the process by which a receiver adapts the frequency and phase of its local carrier oscillator with those of the received signal. In this paper, we survey the literature over the last 5 years (2010–2014) and present a comprehensive literature review and classification of the recent research progress in achieving timing and carrier synchronization in single-input single-output (SISO), multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO), cooperative relaying, and multiuser/multicell interference networks. Considering both single-carrier and multi-carrier communication systems, we survey and categorize the timing and carrier synchronization techniques proposed for the different communication systems focusing on the system model assumptions for synchronization, the synchronization challenges, and the state-of-the-art synchronization solutions and their limitations. Finally, we envision some future research directions

New expression for the functional transformation of the vector Cramér-Rao lower bound

Assume that it is desired to estimate α = f(θ), where f(·) is an r-dimensional function. This paper derives the general expression for the functional transformation of the vector Cramér-Rao lower bound (CRLB). The derived bound is a tight lower bound on the estimation of uncoupled parameters, i.e., parameters that can be estimated separately. Unlike previous results in the literature, this new expression is not dependent on the inverse of the Fisher's information matrix (FIM) of the untransformed parameters, θ. Thus, it can be applied to scenarios where the FIM for θ is ill-conditioned or singular. Finally, as an application, the derived transformation is applied to determine the exact CRLB for estimation of channel parameters in amplify-and-forward relaying networks.This research was supported under Australian Research Council’s Discovery Projects funding scheme (project number DP110102548)

Timing synchronization in decode-and-forward cooperative communication systems

Cooperative communication systems have attracted much attention recently due to their desirable performance gain while using single antenna terminals. This paper addresses the joint timing and channel estimation problem, and furthermore the resynchronization of multiple timing offsets in a cooperative relay system. The estimations of timing and channel are conducted in two phases and the associated Cramér-Rao bounds (CRB) are derived for both phases. It is demonstrated that the conventional CRB is not valid for timing parameters under fading conditions, and a new bound called Weighted Bayesian CRB is proposed. With the timing and channel estimates, a general framework of the resynchronization filter design is developed in order to compensate the multiple timing offsets at the destination. The proposed methods are applied to different scenarios with varying degrees of timing misalignment and are numerically shown to provide excellent performances that approach the perfectly synchronized case. © 2009 IEEE.published_or_final_versio

Timing synchronization for cooperative wireless communications

In this work the effect of perfect and imperfect synchronization on the performance of single-link and cooperative communication is investigated. A feedforward non- data-aided near maximum likelihood (NDA-NML) timing estimator which is effective for an additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel and also for a flat-fading channel, is developed. The Cramer Rao bound (CRB) and modified Cramer Rao bound (MCRB) for the estimator for a single-link transmission over an AWGN channel is derived. A closed form expression for the probability distribution of the timing estimator is also derived. The bit-error-rate (BER) degradation of the NDA-NML timing estimator with raised cosine pulse shaping for static timing errors over an AWGN channel is characterized. A closed form expression is derived for the conditional bit error probability (BEP) with static timing errors of binary phase shift keying modulation over a Rayleigh fading channel using rectangular pulse shaping. The NDA-NML timing estimator is applied to a cooperative communication system with a source, a relay and a destination. A CRB for the estimator for asymptotically low signal-to-noise-ratio case is derived. The timing complexity of the NDA-NML estimator is derived and compared with a feedforward correlation based data-aided maximum likelihood (DA-ML) estimator. The BER performance of this system operating with a detect-and-forward relaying is studied, where the symbol timings are estimated independently for each channel. A feedforward data and channel aided maximum likelihood (DCA-ML) symbol timing estimator for cooperative communication operating over flat fading channels is then developed. For more severe fading the DCA-ML estimator performs better than the NDA- NML estimator and the DA-ML estimator. The performance gains of the DCA-ML estimator over that of the DA-ML estimator become more significant in cooperative transmission than in single-link node-to-node transmission. The NDA-NML symbol timing estimator is applied to three-node cooperative communication in fast flat-fading conditions with various signal constellations. It is found that timing errors have significant effect on performance in fast flat-fading channels. The lower complexity NDA-NML estimator performs well for larger signal constellations in fast fading, when compared to DA-ML estimator. The application of cooperative techniques for saving transmit power is discussed along with the related performance analysis with timing synchronization errors. It is found that power allocations at the source and relay nodes for transmissions, and the related timing errors at the relay and the destination nodes, have considerable effect on the BER performance for power constrained cooperative communication. The performance of multi-node multi-relay decode-and-forward cooperative com- munication system, of various architectures, operating under different fading con- ditions, with timing synchronization and various combining methods, is presented. Switch-and-stay combining and switch-and-examine combining are proposed for multi-node cooperative communication. Apart from the proposed two combining methods equal gain combining, maximal ratio combining and selection combining are also used. It is demonstrated that synchronization error has significant effect on performance in cooperative communication with a range of system architectures, and it is also demonstrated that performance degradation due to synchronization error increases with increasing diversity. It is demonstrated that decode-and- forward relaying strategy with timing synchronization, using a very simple coding scheme, performs better than detect-and-forward relaying with timing synchronization. Analytical expressions are derived for BEP with static and dynamic timing synchronization errors over Rayleigh fading channels using rectangular pulse shaping for amplify-and-forward and detect-and-forward cooperative communications. Moment generating function (MGF) based approach is utilized to find the analytical expressions. It is found that timing synchronization errors have an antagonistic effect on the BEP performance of cooperative communication. With the relay intelligence of knowing whether symbols are detected correctly or not, detect- and-forward cooperative communication performs better than the low complexity amplify-and-forward cooperative communication

SourceSync: A Distributed Wireless Architecture for Exploiting Sender Diversity

Diversity is an intrinsic property of wireless networks. Recent years have witnessed the emergence of many distributed protocols like ExOR, MORE, SOAR, SOFT, and MIXIT that exploit receiver diversity in 802.11-like networks. In contrast, the dual of receiver diversity, sender diversity, has remained largely elusive to such networks. This paper presents SourceSync, a distributed architecture for harnessing sender diversity. SourceSync enables concurrent senders to synchronize their transmissions to symbol boundaries, and cooperate to forward packets at higher data rates than they could have achieved by transmitting separately. The paper shows that SourceSync improves the performance of opportunistic routing protocols. Specifically, SourceSync allows all nodes that overhear a packet in a wireless mesh to simultaneously transmit it to their nexthops, in contrast to existing opportunistic routing protocols that are forced to pick a single forwarder from among the overhearing nodes. Such simultaneous transmission reduces bit errors and improves throughput. The paper also shows that SourceSync increases the throughput of 802.11 last hop diversity protocols by allowing multiple APs to transmit simultaneously to a client, thereby harnessing sender diversity. We have implemented SourceSync on the FPGA of an 802.11-like radio platform. We have also evaluated our system in an indoor wireless testbed, empirically showing its benefits.National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Award CNS-0831660)United States. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Information Theory for Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks Progra

Simultaneous Estimation of Multi-Relay MIMO Channels

This paper addresses training-based channel estimation in distributed amplify-and-forward (AF) multi-input multi-output (MIMO) multi-relay networks. To reduce channel estimation overhead and delay, a training algorithm that allows for simultaneous estimation of the entire MIMO cooperative network’s channel parameters at the destination node is proposed. The exact Cram´er- Rao lower bound (CRLB) for the problem is presented in closedform. Channel estimators that are capable of estimating the overall source-relay-destination channel parameters at the destination are also derived. Numerical results show that while reducing delay, the proposed channel estimators are close to the derived CRLB over a wide range of signal-to-noise ratio values and outperform existing channel estimation methods. Finally, extensive simulations demonstrate that the proposed training method and channel estimators can be effectively deployed in combination with cooperative optimization algorithms to significantly enhance the performance of AF relaying MIMO systems in terms of average-bit-error-rate