Phase, frequency, and time synchronization are crucial requirements for many applications, such as multi-static remote sensing and communication systems. Moreover, the synchronization solution becomes even more challenging when the nodes are orbiting or flying on airborne or spaceborne platforms. This paper compares the available technologies used for the synchronization and coordination of nodes in distributed remote sensing applications. Additionally, this paper proposes a general system model and identifies preliminary guidelines and critical elements for implementing the synchronization mechanisms exploiting the inter-satellite communication link. The distributed phase synchronization loop introduced in this work deals with the self-interference in a full-duplex point to point scenario by transmitting two carriers at each node. All carriers appear with different frequency offsets around a central frequency, called the application central-frequency or the beamforming frequency. This work includes a detailed analysis of the proposed algorithm and the required simulations to verify its performance for different phase noise, AWGN, and Doppler shift scenarios.
The communication range of wireless networks can be greatly improved by using distributed beamforming from a set of independent radio nodes. One of the key challenges in establishing a beamformed communication link from separate radios is achieving carrier frequency and sample timing synchronization. This paper describes an implementation that addresses both carrier frequency and sample timing synchronization simultaneously using RF signaling between designated master and slave nodes. By using a pilot signal transmitted by the master node, each slave estimates and tracks the frequency and timi…
In a distributed multi-antenna system, multiple geographically separated transmit nodes communicate simultaneously to a receive node. Synchronization of these nodes is essential to achieve a good performance at the receiver. RadioWeaves is a new paradigm of cell-free massive MIMO array deployment using distributed multi-antenna panels in indoor environments. In this paper, we study the carrier frequency synchronization problem in distributed RadioWeave panels. We propose a novel, over-the-air synchronization protocol, which we call as BeamSync, to synchronize all the different multi-antenna tr…
L-band Digital Aeronautical Communication System type-1 (L-DACS1) is an emerging standard that aims at enhancing air traffic management (ATM) by transitioning the traditional analog aeronautical communication systems to the superior and highly efficient digital domain. L-DACS1 employs modern and efficient orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) modulation technique to achieve more efficient and higher data rate in comparison to the existing aeronautical communication systems. However, the performance of OFDM systems is very sensitive to synchronization errors. L-DACS1 transmission is…
A joint frame and carrier frequency synchronization algorithm for coherent optical systems, based on the digital computation of the fractional Fourier transform (FRFT), is proposed. The algorithm utilizes the characteristics of energy centralization of chirp signals in the FRFT domain, together with the time and phase shift properties of the FRFT. Chirp signals are used to construct a training sequence (TS), and fractional cross-correlation is employed to define a detection metric for the TS, from which a set of equations can be obtained. Estimates of both the timing offset and carrier frequen…
Radio stripes (RSs) is an emerging technology in beyond 5G and 6G wireless networks to support the deployment of cell-free architectures. In this paper, we investigate the potential use of RSs to enable joint positioning and synchronization in the uplink channel at sub-6 GHz bands. The considered scenario consists of a single-antenna user equipment (UE) that communicates with a network of multiple-antenna RSs distributed over a wide area. The UE is assumed to be unsynchronized to the RSs network, while individual RSs are time- and phase-synchronized. We formulate the problem of joint estimatio…
Universal filtered multi-carrier (UFMC), which groups and filters subcarriers before transmission, is a potential multi-carrier modulation technique investigated for the emerging Machine-Type Communications (MTC). Considering the relaxed timing synchronization requirement of UFMC, we design a novel joint timing synchronization and channel estimation method for multi-user UFMC uplink transmission. Aiming at reducing overhead for higher system performance, the joint estimation problem is formulated using atomic norm minimization that enhances the sparsity of timing offset in the continuous frequ…
The large beamforming gain used to operate at millimeter wave (mmWave) frequencies requires obtaining channel information to configure hybrid antenna arrays. Previously proposed wideband channel estimation strategies, however, assume perfect time-frequency synchronization and neglect phase noise, making these approaches impractical. Consequently, achieving time-frequency synchronization between transmitter and receiver and correcting for phase noise (PN) as the channel is estimated, is the greatest challenge yet to be solved in order to configure hybrid precoders and combiners in practical set…
We propose an algorithm for carrying out joint frame and frequency synchronization in reduced-guard-interval coherent optical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (RGI-CO-OFDM) systems. The synchronization is achieved by using the same training symbols (TS) employed for training-aided channel estimation (TA-CE), thereby avoiding additional training overhead. The proposed algorithm is designed for polarization division multiplexing (PDM) RGI-CO-OFDM systems that use the Alamouti-type polarization-time coding for TA-CE. Due to their optimal TA-CE performance, Golay complementary sequences …
A novel joint symbol timing and carrier frequency offset (CFO) estimation algorithm is proposed for reduced-guard-interval coherent optical orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (RGI-CO-OFDM) systems. The proposed algorithm is based on a constant amplitude zero autocorrelation (CAZAC) sequence weighted by a pseudo-random noise (PN) sequence. The symbol timing is accomplished by using only one training symbol of two identical halves, with the weighting applied to the second half. The special structure of the training symbol is also utilized in estimating the CFO. The performance of the pro…
In this paper, we propose and evaluate two novel double-sequence low-resolution frequency synchronization methods in millimeter-wave (mmWave) systems. In our system model, the base station uses analog beams to send the synchronization signal with infinite-resolution digital-to-analog converters. The user equipment employs a fully digital front end to detect the synchronization signal with low-resolution analog-to-digital converters (ADCs). The key ingredient of the proposed methods is the custom designed synchronization sequence pairs, from which there exists an invertible function (a ratio me…
Joint Synchronization and Radar Parameter Estimation for OFDM-based DISAC Systems
School of Computer Science and Engineering, Constructor University（康斯坦茨大学计算机科学与工程学院）；Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of California San Diego（加州大学圣地亚哥分校电气与计算机工程学院）
Indoor positioning is one of the core technologies of Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI), and is expected to play a significant role in the upcoming era of AI. However, affected by the complexity of indoor environments, it is still highly challenging to achieve continuous and reliable indoor positioning. Currently, 5G cellular networks are being deployed worldwide, the new technologies of which have brought the approaches for improving the performance of wireless indoor positioning. In this paper, we investigate the indoor positioning under the 5G new radio (NR), which h…
Low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite mega-constellation networks aim to address the high connectivity demands with a projected 50,000 satellites in less than a decade. To fully utilize such a large-scale dynamic network, an air network composed of stratospheric nodes, specifically high altitude platform station (HAPS), can help significantly with a number of aspects including mobility management. HAPS-LEO network will be subject to time-varying conditions, and in this paper, we introduce an artificial intelligence (AI)-based approach for the unique channel estimation and synchronization problems. F…
In the existing literature on joint timing and frequency synchronization of orthogonal time frequency space modulation (OTFS), practically infeasible impulse pilot with large peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) is deployed. Hence, in this paper, we propose a timing offset (TO) and carrier frequency offset (CFO) estimation for OTFS over a linear time-varying (LTV) channel, using a low PAPR pilot structure. The proposed technique utilizes the recently proposed practically feasible pilot structure with a cyclic prefix (PCP). We exploit the periodic properties of PCP in both delay and time domains …
L-band digital aeronautical communication system type-1 (L-DACS1) is an emerging standard that aims at enhancing air traffic management by transitioning the traditional analog aeronautical communication systems to the superior and highly efficient digital domain. L-DACS1 employs modern and efficient orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) modulation technique to achieve more efficient and higher data rate in comparison to the existing aeronautical communication systems. However, the performance of OFDM systems is very sensitive to synchronization errors such as symbol timing offset (…
In the framework of optical high data rate satellite-to-ground links, we investigate the performance of a coherent receiver which combines an adaptive optics system and a digital carrier synchronization technique. We propose a digital carrier synchronization system based on a phase-locked loop and use end-to-end simulations to characterize the impact of the atmospheric turbulence in the case of a representative low Earth orbit satellite-to-ground transmission link. The results show that classical digital phase-locked loop techniques can be a reliable solution to accurately compensate for the D…
This paper applies a windowed frequency-domain overlapped block filtering approach for the acquisition of direct sequence signals. The windows, as a novel viewpoint, not only allow pulse shaping without a front end pulse shaping filter, but also improve the performance of the spectrum sensing unit which can efficiently be implemented into this frequency-domain receiver and may further be used for spectrum sensing in cognitive radios or narrowband interference cancellation in military radios. The proposed receiver is applicable for initial time synchronization of different signals containing a …
In this paper, we develop a novel angle-domain adaptive filtering (ADAF)-based frequency synchronization method for the uplink of a massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) multiuser network, which is applicable for users with either separate or overlapped angle-of-arrival (AoA) regions. For each user, we first introduce the angle-constraining matrix (ACM), which consists of a set of selected match-filter (MF) beamformers pointing to the AoAs of the interested user. Then, the adaptive beamformer can be acquired by appropriately designing the ADAF vectors. Such beamformer can achieve two-s…
Synchronization of transceiver chains is a major challenge in the practical realization of massive MIMO and especially distributed massive MIMO. While frequency synchronization is comparatively easy to achieve, estimating the carrier phase and sampling time offsets of individual transceivers is challenging. However, under the assumption of phase and time offsets that are constant over some duration and knowing the positions of several transmit and receive antennas, it is possible to estimate and compensate for these offsets even in scattering environments with multipath propagation components.…
Cohesive Distributed Satellite Systems (CDSS) is a key enabling technology for the future of remote sensing and communication missions. However, they have to meet strict synchronization requirements before their use is generalized. When clock or local oscillator signals are generated locally at each of the distributed nodes, achieving exact synchronization in absolute phase, frequency, and time is a complex problem. In addition, satellite systems have significant resource constraints, especially for small satellites, which are envisioned to be part of the future CDSS. Thus, the development of …
National University of Defense Technology（国防科技大学）；University of Leeds（利兹大学）
Multiple-input multiple-output orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (MIMO-OFDM) is a key technology component in the evolution towards cognitive radio (CR) in next-generation communication in which the accuracy of timing and frequency synchronization significantly impacts the overall system performance. In this paper, we propose a novel scheme leveraging extreme learning machine (ELM) to achieve high-precision synchronization. Specifically, exploiting the preamble signals with synchronization offsets, two ELMs are incorporated into a traditional MIMO-OFDM system to estimate both the resi…
