Reliable Symbol Synchronization in Software-Driven Acoustic Sensor Networks

Symbol synchronization in traditional hardware driven communication systems has relied on the transmission of training sequences of symbols just before the beginning of the frame symbols. The use of training sequences is not suitable for software-driven communication systems, such as lightweight acoustic underwater sensor networks, in which the high symbol loss rate may cause the loss of training symbols, preventing accurate symbol synchronization. Software-driven communication networks require symbol synchronization that is resilient to a high loss environment, that does not represent large communication or processing overhead, and that is tunable to the noise profile of different environments.