Objectives: To learn and study about synchronization in digital communication system To understand and study the principle and

and concept of symbol synchronization To analyse and explain the technique of symbol synchronization and its application

Introduction Synchronize means to cause one thing to occur or operate with exact coincidence in time or rate as another thing. As applied to digital communications, it usually means the process of causing one oscillator to oscillate with the same frequency and phase as another oscillator. Synchronization refers to the process of making two or more events occur at the same time. Also, synchronization refers to one of two distinct but linked concepts which are synchronization of processes and synchronization of data. Symbol can be defined as two voltages level which are considered to be one and zero. For example for voltages level 0V and 3V, 0V can be considered as 0 and 3V can be considered 1. Normally data is transferred in a frame, one frame consist of Nth words.

Figure above will explain clearly symbols, words and frames. Symbol timing synchronization is the process of forcing the symbol clock in the receiver to oscillate with the same phase and frequency as the symbol clock used at the transmitter. The receiver, in digital communication systems, has accurate knowledge about incoming symbol started and when it is over. This knowledge is required in order to know the proper symbol integration interval. The receiver has to know the instant of time at which the modulation can change its state., i.e., the starting and finishing times of the individual symbols, so that it may determine when to sample and when to quench the product integrator. The estimation of these times is called symbol synchronization or clock recovery.

In order to achieve optimum demodulation, all digital receivers need to be synchronized to the incoming digital symbol. Symbol synchronization and phase synchronization are similar in that they both involve producing in the receiver a replica of a portion of the transmitted signal. For phase

synchronization, it is an accurate replica of the carrier.For symbol synchronization, it is a square wave at the symbol transition rate(the receiver must be able to produce a square wave for each incoming signals transitions between symbols). All digital receivers need to be synchronized to the incoming digital symbol transitions in order to achieve optimum demodulation. There are two classes of synchronizers based on the known information about data stream:Non data aided synchronizer (NDA): This type of the synchronizer do not know information about the actual data sequence. Data aided synchronizers(DA): This type of synchronizer use known information about data stream. The symbol synchronizers can be classified into two basic groups according to the type of the loop:Open loop synchronizers: These circuits recover a replica of the transmitter data clock output directly from operation on the incoming data stream. Data clock from the transmitted signal is recovered at the transmitter directly by incoming signal. The frequency component is generates at symbol rates at receiver by operating the incoming signal with a combination of filtering and non-linear device. Then, the frequency generates at symbol rates is filtered with bandpass filter and is amplified by high gain saturating amplifier to shaped the signal into square waves as clock.

Types of Open-loop Symbol Synchronization (Bit Synchronizers)

Closed loop synchronizers: These synchronizers attempt to lock a local data clock to the incoming signal by use of comparative measurements on the local and incoming signal. Closed loop synchronizer uses comparative measurement on incoming signal and local generated data lock signal to bring the local generated signal to be synchronized with the incoming signal. Example of closed loop synchronizer is early/late gate synchronizer.