Abstract: Symbol beginnings estimated by conventional methods utilizing the cyclic prefix (CP) continually vary with the path energies in OFDM systems, therefore ISI and ICI are inevitable.An improved coarse symbol synchronization algorithm impervious to delay spread is proposed in this paper.Only employing the rear of CP, timing positions of the proposed method concentrate on the first path in multi path environments.Simulation results in MW/SW channels show excellent performance of this approach.

Key words: symbol synchronization, OFDM, time synchronization