A Sparse Temporal Synchronization Algorithm of Laser Communications for Feeder Links in 5G Nonterrestrial Networks

To foster the rollout of 5G in unserved areas, 3GPP has kicked off a study item on new radio to support nonterrestrial networks (NTNs). Due to ultra-wideband of laser, laser communication is very promising for the feeder links of NTNs; however, imprecise temporal synchronization hinders its deployment, which results from a combination of propagation delay, velocity, acceleration, and jerk of NTN platform. The prior synchronization algorithms are inapplicable to the temporal synchronization in laser communications due to the extremely high data rate and Doppler shift. This paper is devoted to addressing the temporal synchronization problem in laser communications. In particular, we first observe the sparsity of laser signal in time-frequency domain. On top of this observation, we propose a new sparsity-aware algorithm for temporal synchronization without carrier aid through sparse discrete polynomial-phase transform and sparse discrete fractional Fourier transform. Subsequently, we implement the proposed algorithm via designing a hardware prototype. To further evaluate its performance, we conduct extensive simulations, and the results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm in terms of good accuracy, low power consumption, and low computational complexity, suggesting its attractiveness for the feeder links of 5G NTNs.