Patent ID: 8126103

Claim:
A method for synchronizing a communication signal, wherein the communication signal has a frame structure and each frame of the frame structure includes at least one symbol, the method comprising: receiving at a receiver a first synchronization word from a modulator in a first sequence of a communication signal, the first synchronization word providing a reference symbol; receiving at the receiver a second synchronization word from the modulator in a second sequence of the communication signal, wherein the second synchronization word is a permutation of the first synchronization word, wherein the permutation of the first synchronization word comprises applying a permutation matrix to the first synchronization word, wherein the permutation matrix is a sparse matrix of order M having ones only at the i and the k components if ( i - 1 ) ⁢ p + q ⁢ = mod ⁢ ⁢ M ⁢ k - 1 , where p and q are integers less than M.