Patent ID: 7280464

Claim:
An orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) communication system for transmitting and receiving data on a plurality of subcarriers and having a featureless synchronization signal transmitted on said subcarriers to correct for a frequency offset and to synchronize a received signal said OFDM communications system comprising: a transmitter said transmitter further comprising: a coding function for receiving a data input signal and modulating and encoding the data input signal into complex frequency domain data samples; a PN sync generator for generating transmit synchronization tones; an IFFT function for converting the complex frequency domain data samples and the transmit synchronization tones into a plurality of complex time domain samples in a plurality of IFFT bins on the plurality of subcarriers; an add symbol buffer for adding a PN Sequence to the complex time domain samples on the plurality of subcarriers; a digital IF up conversion function for converting the complex time domain samples on the plurality of subcarriers to an IF signal for translating and transmitting the complex time domain samples; and a receiver for receiving the transmitted complex time domain samples said receiver further comprising: a digital IF down conversion for converting the received complex time domain samples; a PN sync generator for generating receiver synchronization tones; a synchronization correlator for performing timing and frequency estimation on the received complex time domain samples by correlating the transmit synchronization tones and the receiver synchronization tones and generating a frequency vector and a timing control signal; a multiplier for multiplying the receiver complex time domain samples by the frequency vector to correct for the frequency offset; a remove symbol buffer for removing the PN sequence with the timing control signal; a FFT for converting the receiver complex time domain samples into frequency domain samples; and a decoder for demodulating and decoding the frequency domain samples to receive the data.