MAXIMUM LIKELIHOOD FRAME SYNCHRONIZATION FOR
FLAT FADING CHANNELS
Patrick Robertson
German Aerospace Research Establishment (DLR)
Institute for Communications Technology
D-8031 Oberpfaffenhofen,
Germany. Tel. $49 8153 28 808. Fax $49 8153 28 1442
Abstract
We derive the maximum likelihood (ML) decision rule
for locating a frame synchronization pattern in data, dis-
turbed by flat fading and additive white Gaussian noise.
We give a high signal to noise ratio approximation which
is simpler to implement and almost reaches the perfor-
mance of the ML decision rule. The correlation rule is
shown to perform catastrophically. Simulation results
for the Rayleigh channel show that the new ML decision
rule performs about 1 dB better than the Gaussian ML
rule. The rules presented here require channel state in-
formation for each received symbol; in many cases this
information is already available or can be obtained with
relative ease.
1 Introduction
In the past decades, there has been much research into
optimum frame synchronization. Massey derived the
maximum-likelihood (ML) rule for the Gaussian channel
with coherent BPSK modulation, as well as suboptimum
rules [l]. Nielsen analyzed these rules in more detail,
concluding that the well known correlation rule -which
was believed to be optimum prior to Massey's work- per-
formed several dB worse than the true ML rule and its
high SNR approximation (high SNR rule) [2]. Further,
he gave an upper bound on the performance of a frame
synchronizer in a noiseless environment, where the ap-
pearance of the synchronization word in the random data
is the only disturbing factor. This upper bound is the
same for the ML, high SNR and correlation rules.
Many years later, Lui and Tan [3] extended the anal-
ysis to M-ary phase (coherent and noncoherent) signal-
ing. Again it was shown that the correlation rule per-
formed several dB worse than the ML and high SNR rule.
The high SNR rule offers the advantage of being almost
as easy to implement as the correlation rule, and much
easier than the true ML rule (which needs an estimate
of the channel SNR and uses complex arithmetic). Re-
348.4.1
1426 CH3132-810000-1426$3.00
And:
Institute for Communications Technology
Federal Armed Forces University Munich,
Germany. Tel. $49 89 6004 3648
cently, Moon and Soliman derived the ML rule for a time
invariant AWGN channel with intersymbol interference,
together with two approximations [4].
Here we present the derivation of the ML rule for a
flat fading channel with M-ary phase coherent signal-
ing. We assume that channel state information (CSI) is
available for each received symbol (which is the case, for
instance, when a subsequent ML Viterbi decoder uses
CSI to improve decoding performance; CSI perhaps gen-
erated using a kalman filter [5]). As will be explained
later, it is assumed that the sync word is spread over
the data frame. We derive a high SNR rule, and show
that there is no useful equivalent of the correlation rule.
The high SNR rule is easy to implement, and only mi-
nor changes need to be made to a frame synchronizer
using the Gaussian high SNR rule from [3]. As Lui and
Tan pointed out, exact analytical analysis of the syn-
chronization rules does not generally seem to be feasible
for other than the correlation rule even for the Gaussian
channel. For this reason, we resort to computer simula-
tion to evaluate and compare performance.
The use of channel state information to improve the
performance of a maximum likelihood (Viterbi) decoder
in the case of fading was first proposed by Hagenauer
in [6]. The new metric was hardly more complex than
the common soft decision metric, but gave significant
improvement. Due to the increased importance of mobile
communications, the fading cha.nne1 has attracted much
at tent ion.
2 Derivation of the Maximum
Likelihood Rule
We assume a multiplicative flat fading channel followed
by an additive white Gaussian noise channel (AWGN).
Fig. 1shows the discrete equivalent channel model used,
together with the structure of a possible receiver employ-
ing a Viterbi decoder. For simplicity, we use a similar
notation and derivation to that in [3] (Gaussian chan-
0 1992 IEEE ICC '92
nel). The modulation scheme is M-aryl demodulation is 1 1 ~ 1 1is the Euclidean norm of v. Since we wish to maxi-
assumed to be coherent with perfect symbol timing. The mize this conditional probability over p , we can equiva-
set of transmitted symbols is { Wj ,0 5 j _< M - 1). The lently maximize the likelihood function:
data is transmitted in a stream of N-symbol frames, of
which L symbols in each frame are a known synchroniza-
tion sequence S = (SO, S I ,...,S L - ~ ) .B y assuming fast
fading and spreading the sync word across the frame we i=O
have independent channel states for each symbol, see
Fig. 2. The symbols in the data portion of the frame
d = (do, d l , ...,dN-,+l), are assumed to be chosen ran- (3)
all d i = O
domly and uniformly from the signal set. The fading
value (channel state) for each symbol i is represented by Equivalently (leaving out irrelevant factors):
ai and here we assume perfect channel estimation i.e.
ai = ai.
The demodulator output consists of a sequence of N
complex vectors. This sequence x = ( C O ,1 1 , ..., X N - 1 ) is i=O

composed of the corresponding sequence of transmitted

vectors, each multiplied by a real-valued fading value a i ,
plus a sequence of mutually independent random noise all d i=O

vectors ni; see Fig. 1. The 2 components of the noise <,> denotes the inner product. Because of the follow-
vectors are iid with zero mean and variance N0/2. NO is ing:
the one-sided power spectral density.
The receiver observes any N consecutive channel out-
puts, and tries to determine the beginning of a new
frame, which must lie somewhere in this sequence x . all d i=O

Because the frame is assumed to be repeated periodi-

cally, the observed sequence contains one complete syn-
chronization word. It is important to note that in the i=O j=1
following, additions of indices will be modulo N . Be- we obtain:
cause the sync word is spread across the frame, the
L-1 L- 1
synchronizer must know which symbols of a frame are
L&) = e&<"r(')+r J,ad*)+,> e~ll~~~g(s)+,ll~
sync symbols. The sequence g = (g(O), g(l), ...,g ( L - 1))
i=O i=O
denotes the positions of the L sync symbols; similarly,
11 = (h(O),h(l), ..., h ( N - L - 1)) denotes the data posi- , N-L-1 M e$ [ < Z h ( l l + r iWlah(t)+r >- II ''j a h [ ,) +
1 , 11'
tions (see Fig 2).
i=O j=1
Our frame synchronizer should generate an estimate b
in [0, 1, ..., N - 11. This should maximize the conditional Since we can divide this by a fa.ctor not depending on p
probability of receiving the sequence x given that fi was (indices mod N ) :
the start of a frame, i.e p(xl,ii). We can express this by
(ML rule):

M - ( N - L ) is the probability of any data sequence d. i=O j = 1

Also:

i=O j=1

we can maximize:

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 and, again assuming that all E, are equal:
L-1

LII(P) = ag(i)+p < tg(i)+p 1 Si -wj(il> . (13)

i=O

This is very similar to the high SNR rule derived in [3],

A i=o
~

j=1
except for the multiplication with the CSI factor corre-
sponding to each symbol.
Ej is the energy of the signal vector W,.
If we compare this likelihood function with that of [3]:
4 Correlation rule
L-1
LML-AWGN(P) = < zg(i)+p,Si > - Inspecting (7), we observe that the first term is equiva-
i=O lent to the normal correlation rule (except for the CSI):
L-1
LC(;L) = ag(i)+p < tg(i)+pr Si >. (14)
i=O
we notice that there is an extra term, and that the chan-
nel state information is used in several places in (7). Note We will compare the correlation rule with the ideal and
that even if all Ej are equal, the last term in (7) cannot high SNR rules.
be deleted.
5 Results
3 High SNR rule Monte Carlo computer simulation results are shown for
\.ire will now derive an approximation of (7) for the c a e BPSK, QPsK and 8PSK modulation schemes in Figs 3
of high signal to noise ratios. In order to do this, we to 5 . The three examples are taken from [3]. Each curve
approximate: shows the percentage of correctly synchronized frames
for the different rules depending on the average channel
SNR. Following the order of the legends, we start by

1
M
g(l)+P
ag(i)+, < zg(i)+,,, W j ' > - E j 7 ) M showing the performance of the ML and high SNR rules
j=1 for the AWGN channel, the difference between the curves
is low. Next we see the ML and high SNR rules with and

ag(i)+p
2
]
< z g ( i ) + p , W' > -Ej- a g ( i2) + P ), ('1
without CSI, on the Rayleigh distributed fading channel.
Finally the performance of the correlation rule without
and with CSI is given.
where 3 = j ( g ( i ) ) is that j which maximizes: We observe that the ML and high SNR rules with CSI
perform up to just over 1dB better than those without
a2 . CSI. We also notice that the high SNR rules approach the
ag(i)+p < z g ( i ) + p Wj > -Ej
3 - dl)tP
2 ' (lo) ML rules at high SNR. Interesting is that the difference
between the ML and high SNR rules at low SNR, is
or larger than for just the AWGN cha.nne1. The greatest
improvement that can be reached when starting with the
< z g ( i ) + p r wj >, (11) AWGN high SNR rule is almost 1.5 dB (ML rule with

348.4.3
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CSI). But the low additional complexity of the high SNR
rule with CSI (assuming CSI is available) makes it seem
very attractive in practice. An important result is that
for BPSK the high SNR rule with CSI is always better
than the ML rule without CSI. This is true in the cases
of QPSK and 8PSK for SNRs greater than -1 dB and 2
dB respectively.
We notice that the correlation rule performs signifi-
cantly worse than the other rules. Looking at the per-
formance at high SNR, it appears that the correlation
rules never give the same performance predicted by [3]
(random data limited). The explanation -in the case of
no noise- is simple: The correlation term (without CSI)
a t the correct position, does not necessarily equal the
energy of the sync word, but will depend on the fading
values. At other positions in the frame, which closely
resemble the sync word, the correlation term might be
higher than at the true position; this leads to a false
sync. The same also applies to the correlation rule us-
ing CSI, but even to a greater extent: Using CSI in the
correlation rule degrades performance significantly.
[2] P. Nielsen, “Some optimum and suboptimum frame
synchronizers for binary data in Gaussian noise,”
IEEE Trans. Commun., vol. 21, pp. 770-772, June
1973.
[3] G. L. Lui and H. H . Tan, “Frame synchronization for
Gaussian channels,” IEEE Trans. Commun., vol. 35,
pp. 818-829, August 1987.
[4] B. H . Moon and S. S. Soliman, “ML frame synchro-
nization for the Gaussian channel with ISI,” in Proc.
ICC ’91, pp. 1698-1702, June 1991.
[5] R. Haeb and H. Meyr, “A digital synchronizer
for linearly modulated signals transmitted over a
frequency-nonselective fading chanel,” in Proc. ICC
’88, pp. 1012-1016, June 1988.
[6] J . Hagenauer, “Viterbi decoding of convolu-
tional codes for fading- and burst-channels,” in
Proc. Zurich Seminar on Digital Communicatioiis,
pp. G2.1-G2.7, 1980.

6 Conclusions Transmitted
Symbols

We derived the ML frame sync rule for the flat fading I

channel with coherent phase M-ary signaling. To ensure
Viterbi Decoder
independence of the fading values corresponding to each
sync symbol, the sync word is spread across the frame. Fading Noise
Motivation for the derivation was the improvement in
the performance of a ML Viterbi decoder in flat fading
through the use of CSI [SI. A simpler high SNR frame
sync rule was found that performs well a t all SNR, and
even outperforms the AWGN ML rule in most cases.
The correlation rule (with and without CSI) was found Figure 1: Channel Model and Receiver
to be unsuitable for the case of fading. In the case of
the simplified high SNR rule (13), the only modification
required is, a multiplication with the CSI factor for each
symbol, und is thus easy to implement. The additional
Frame Next frame
complexity of the true ML rule (through the CSI) is also
not great. Improvement gained by using the ML rule
with CSI is about 1 dB for the Rayleigh channel, which
should not be thrown away, especially if CSI is already
so SI sz s3
available. Further work could focus on the effects of
unreliable channel state information and on the influence Posioon to k found by framesync-
of non-independent fading values.
N symbols at receiver
Random data

h(0) = 0 , ... , h(4)=5 , ... , h(8)=10 ...etc g(O)=4, g( 1)=9 .__

References etc

[l] J . Massey, “Optimum frame synchronization,” IEEE

Trans. Commun., vol. 20, pp. 115-119, April 1972. Figure 2: Structure of the Frame

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