Synchronisation of digital communication systems

According to the present invention a system and a method for synchronising digital communication systems is proposed. Thereby a reference symbol RS consisting of a sequence of a plurality of synchronisation patterns SP and followed by data symbols, which are both modulated (13) on a RF-frequency is provided. The received reference symbol (RS) is correlated with a delayed version of itself and the correlation peak is identified giving the position and complex correlation result that can be used for the timing and frequency synchronisation of a digital communication system. According to the present invention the phase of the last and/or the first of the plurality of synchronisation patterns SP of said reference symbol RS (or a part or a multiple thereof) is phase shifted, e.g. by 180°, before the transmission step. According to the present invention therefore the effects of random contribution of adjacent data symbols of the reference symbol to a correlation calculation based on a synchronisation algorithm can be entirely eliminated. Through the inversion of the last synchronisation pattern and the reference symbol the correlation peak, which is used to determine the symbol timing, is offset inside the reference symbol. Thus, the precision of the timing error estimation is improved significantly.