Complexity-Efficient Sidelink Synchronization Signal Detection Scheme for Cellular Vehicle-to-Everything Communication Systems

Synchronization is a challenging issue in vehicle-to-everything (V2X) cellular communication, especially when V2X devices need to directly communicate with each other outside the network coverage area. By adopting the maximum likelihood principle, we propose joint detection of the sidelink secondary synchronization signal (SL-SSS) and carrier frequency offset (CFO) in a V2X system using 5G new radio sidelink. We formulate an effective joint coherent synchronization scheme for cellular V2X applications by decoupling the estimation of the sidelink identity and CFO, which requires a priori knowledge of channel state information. To verify the feasibility of the proposed detection scheme, we derive a simplified implementation of the proposed SL-SSS detector and a closed-form expression for the detection probability. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed SL-SSS detector exhibits either comparable performance in terms of detection probability or reduced complexity when compared with conventional SL-SSS detectors. Using the proposed method in the cellular V2X system enables V2X devices to achieve robust synchronization with reduced power consumption during the initial synchronization procedure, while also offering valuable insights for designing a simple, efficient sidelink synchronization receiver.