Long frame sync words for binary PSK telemetry

Correlation criteria have previously been established for identifying whether a given binary sequence would be a good frame sync word for phase-shift keyed telemetry. In the past, the search for a good K-bit sync word has involved the application of these criteria to the entire set of 2 exponent K binary K-tuples. It is shown that restricting this search to a much smaller subset consisting of K-bit prefixes of pseudonoise sequences results in sync words of comparable quality, with greatly reduced computer search times for larger values of K. As an example, this procedure is used to find good sync words of length 16-63; from a storage viewpoint, each of these sequences can be generated by a 5- or 6-bit linear feedback shift register.