Analysis of the narrowband interference effect on OFDM timing synchronization

In OFDM systems, the symbol timing synchronization is needed to find an estimate of where the symbol starts. The most popular of the pilot-aided timing estimators is the one proposed by Schmidl and Cox (S&C) [Robust Frequency and Timing Synchronization for OFDM, IEEE Transactions on Communications, vol. 45, no. 12, pp. 1613-1621, Dec. 1997]. Generally, the proper action of the timing estimator may be strongly affected by the presence of disturbances, like narrowband interference (NBI) signals. This paper investigates the effect of NBI signals, which may arise in the OFDM band as the spectrum becomes more crowded, on the timing synchronization for OFDM systems. The performance of the S&C symbol timing synchronizer is evaluated in an analytical way in the presence of narrowband interferers. Also, the probabilities of both missing and false detection of a training sequence are addressed. Further, simulations have been carried out to verify the validity of the approximations in the analysis.