Wireless Pers Commun (2010) 52:829–840 DOI 10.1007/s11277-009-9665-8 A New Timing Synchronization Metric for OFDM Based WLAN Systems Benudhar Sahu · Saswat Chakrabarti · S. L. Maskara Published online: 4 February 2009 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC. 2009 Abstract A new timing synchronization scheme for Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) based Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) is presented. Spe- cifically, use of one long OFDM symbol in the frame format of IEEE802.11a is suggested for coarse timing synchronization. A new timing metric has been proposed which results in significant improvement in performance compared to the results reported. Keywords OFDM · WLAN · Synchronization 1 Introduction Several standards for high speed wireless networks such as IEEE 802.11a/g and IEEE 802.16a have been proposed based on Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM). It is well known that OFDM combats Intersymbol Interference (ISI) due to multipath fading [1]. OFDM receiver, however, is highly sensitive to synchronization error as an OFDM sig- nal consists of narrow overlapping orthogonal sub carriers [1]. Timing synchronization in OFDM receiver refers to finding the start of an OFDM symbol [2]. Timing synchronization error in an OFDM receiver leads to ISI, Intercarrier Interference (ICI) and also change in amplitude of the detected signal [2] and degrades the performance of the WLAN systems. Timing synchronization is therefore is one of the important tasks to be performed in an IEEE 802.11a WLAN system. Timing synchronization schemes are broadly classified as (a) data B. Sahu (B ) Department of Electronics and Electrical Communication Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India e-mail: bdsahu@ece.iitkgp.ernet.in S. Chakrabarti G. S. Sanyal School of Telecommunications, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India S. L. Maskara Jaypee Institute of Information Technology, Noida, India 123