Patent ID: 7889803

Claim:
A method of timing and frequency offset estimation for a channel in an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) environment, wherein said method comprises: estimating timing and frequency offsets by more than one estimation process, wherein the estimation process comprises a scatter pilot based timing and frequency offset estimating process; assigning weights to said timing and frequency offsets based on a condition of said channel; said scatter pilot based timing and frequency offset estimating process comprises: calculating timing and frequency offsets using said estimates of timing and frequency offsets and said weights; calculating a phase difference between two received scatter pilots spaced four OFDM symbols apart; and approximating the timing and frequency offset using Δφ k ≈4(ΔfT u +ξk), where T u is an OFDM symbol time, Δf is a frequency offset, ξ=ΔT/T is a timing offset in percentage, and k is a sub-carrier (bin) index.