Patent ID: 7298806

Claim:
A data-aided method of tracking the timing offset between a transmitted signal having a training sequence and a received signal using a pre-estimated timing offset, the method comprising the steps of: a. obtaining a corrected received signal using the received signal and the pre-estimated timing offset; b. obtaining a first estimate of the deviation in the pre-estimated timing offset out of a plurality of probable deviations by performing the steps of: i. de-convolving the corrected received signal shifted through the first probable deviation with the training sequence to obtain an estimated channel transfer function; ii. filtering the training sequence through the estimated transfer function to obtain an expected signal corresponding to the first probable deviation; iii. calculating an error factor between the expected signal and the corrected received signal shifted through the first probable deviation; performing steps i-iii for each probable deviation; and iv. identifying the probable deviation yielding the optimum value of error factor as the first estimate of the deviation; and c. obtaining an improved estimate of the deviation using the corrected received signal and the first estimate of the deviation.