Frame synchronization in the presence of frequency offset

A new frame synchronization technique, which is robust to carrier frequency and phase errors, is proposed for -ary PSK systems. This technique is derived through modification of the procedure used for obtaining the maximum-likelihood (ML) rule in the paper by Gansman et al. The proposed rule is based on an operation called a double correlation which evaluates a correlation after properly multiplying the received signal with a sync pattern. It was shown through computer simulation that the proposed rule generally outperformed the existing rules when a frequency offset existed.