orthogonal frequency division multiplexing receiver embodiments of the invention provide timing misalignment estimation by calculating the intra - baud timing differential . the preferred method exploits the spectral structure of the short - preamble in that a time delay in the time - domain is manifest as a phase rotation in the frequency - domain . the timing misalignment is determined by special processing the spectral peaks of the modified short - preamble . an alternative embodiment linearly combines the two long - preamble symbols to construct a single “ best estimate ” long - preamble symbol . a normalized dot product of the “ best estimate ” long - preamble symbol and the ideal on - baud symbol is computed to obtain the magnitude of the timing misalignment . a dot product between the “ best estimate ” long - preamble symbol and the time derivative of the ideal on - baud sampled sequence is computed to obtain the sign of the timing misalignment .