Abstract
With the robustness to the delay spread and the efficiency of thefast Fourier transform algorithm, orthogonal frequency divisionmultiplexing (OFDM) techniques have been used in wideapplications. Wireless applications are a very hot research topicin the recent years. In this thesis, we want to perform timingsynchronization based on the physical layer specification of theIEEE 802.11a standard, which is one of the wireless local areanetwork standards. We have derived optimal data-aidedmaximum-likelihood (DA-ML) timing offset estimation for additivewhite Gaussian noise (AWGN) channels and multipath channels. Alsosimplified methods for multipath channel are proposed andevaluated. The multipath channels are quasi-static which arestatic during an entire packet and different for other packets.The simulation results show that our DA-ML estimation algorithmscan provide optimal performance for comparisons and simplifiedmethods perform well for the environments that the system isdesigned for.