Method for estimating the time of arrival of an access burst, and apparatus

The present invention refers to a method for estimating the time of arrival (TOA) of an access burst (AB) received in a base transceiver station (BST, 1) of a mobile communication system designed for data transmission in time slots, each time slot being divided into a number of symbol periods. In order to allow estimation of the TOA in mobile communication systems with data transmission with power shaping turned on as well as in mobile communication systems with data transmission with power shaping switched off, it is suggested that a symbol difference of received and demodulated complex symbols contained in the symbol periods is used for estimating the TOA of the AB. In particular, it is suggested that a detection window of a given length is moved over the time slot in discrete steps, a symbol difference of all complex symbols contained in the symbol periods of the time slot is calculated, for each of the discrete steps a sum of the symbol differences for the symbol periods covered by the detection window during the current step is calculated, and one of the discrete steps for which the maximum of the sum of the symbol difference occurs is assumed to be the TOA of the AB within the time slot.