Data-aided timing synchronization for FM-DCSK UWB communication systems

Frequency-modulated differential chaos shift keying (FM-DCSK) ultrawideband (UWB) communication systems convey information by transmitting ultrashort chaotic pulses (in the nanosecond scale). Since such pulses are ultrashort, timing offset may severely degrade the bit error rate (BER) performance. In this paper, a fast data-aided timing synchronization algorithm with low complexity is proposed for FM-DCSK UWB systems, which capitalizes on the excellent correlation characteristic of chaotic signals. Simulation results show that the BER performance of such systems is fairly close to that of perfect timing thanks to the proposed new algorithm. Moreover, the new algorithm requires less synchronization searching time and lower computational complexity than the conventional one for transmitted reference UWB systems existing in the current literature. © 2006 IEEE.