Carrier phase derived symbol timing

Abstract

A method and apparatus for symbol timing initialization in a multi-carrier receiver. The method uses phase measurements from a plurality of the individual carriers to make an initial determination of the symbol boundary. The method measures the phases of two carriers, preferably the pilot carrier and one adjacent carrier, and, after compensating for phase distortion associated with modulation of data onto the carrier and phase distortion imposed on the carriers by the channel, determines the symbol timing based on the phase difference between the two carriers. Because a sampling offset results in a phase offset from bin to bin of a DFT, an examination of the extent of the phase offset between two known symbols yields the sampling offset, and thus the symbol frame index.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.