Adding up for frame synchronization

A novel approach is here introduced for the design of the Unique Word (UW) to be inserted into TDNMTDMA systems for frame synchronization purposes. In particular, the UW is a very simple sequence of ones that are distributed along the frame in order to improve autocorrelation properties. The resulting UW is identified as Unit-UW (U-UW). We show in this paper that U-UW leads to an optimum detector with very limited complexity, which does not require any multiplication. A fully analytical performance characterization is also presented and validated through numerical simulations.