Does anyone have an idea how one would perform BPSK symbol synchronization if symbol length is allowed to vary?
As dumb as that sounds, this is not a theretical question.The "Proximity" Type B NFC protocol defined in ISO/IEC 14443 has such a scheme.
Brief Background of ISO 14443 Type B
For communication from a Proximity tag/card (e.g. a wireless smart card) to a reader, BPSK modulation is used*. The symbol period is (usually) equal to 16 carrier cycles. To begin communication, a start-of-frame synchronization sequence is sent, allowing the reader to A) identify the carrier frequency, and B) determine the phase for a logic 0. Then the card sends data out in characters. Each character contains a logic 0 start bit, 8 bits of data, then a logic 1 stop bit. (Think UART.) This means that between bytes you always see bit 7 -> 1 -> 0 -> bit 0
.
For historical reasons, the specification allows the card to include "Extra Guard Time" (EGT) between each character. Before proceeding to the logic 0 start bit, the card is allowed to arbitrarily extend the logic 1 stop bit up to 32 carrier cycles, in increments of 0.5 carrier cycles. (So phase changes still always occur at 0° or 180° of the carrier.) This is something that can be done dynamically; the reader does not know in advance what the card will do.
Since the bit following the EGT is always the logic 0 start bit, you can of course pick back up symbol synchronization, but it complicates the whole process. It's hard to find information online on such a convoluted scheme, and the textbooks I have do not cover this. I'm wondering if anyone else has run into a similar situation and has some ideas on how decoding might work.
*The actual details are more complicated. The card performs load modulation of the 13.56 MHz carrier frequency using an 848 KHz sub-carrier. However the 13.56 MHz carrier signal can be easily filtered out by the reader, leaving just the sub-carrier information from the card.