Apparatus and method for estimating timing offset in a wireless communication system

An apparatus for estimating a timing offset in an Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) wireless communication system using a preamble and a pilot, comprising:

• a first timing offset estimator for estimating a carrier offset by using a preamble included in a packet currently received based on an OFDM method and estimating a first timing offset based on the estimated carrier offset to thereby produce a first timing offset estimation value;
• a second timing offset estimator for estimating a second timing offset to thereby produce a second timing offset estimation value by transforming the OFDM packet into signals of a frequency domain and using a pilot signal of the frequency-domain signals;
• a multiplexer for selectively outputting the first timing offset estimation value and the second timing offset estimation value based on a control signal;
• a timing offset compensator for compensating data signals for a timing offset among the frequency-domain signals based on the output from the multiplexer;
• and
• a controller for checking a channel condition based on packet error information of a previously received packet to thereby produce error condition information and outputting the control signal based on the error condition information.