Q: FAQ: Guidelines for sync word choices

Guidelines for "optimum" sync word choices.

There are better and worse choices of sync word. E.g. 0xFFFF or 0x0000 are not good sync words, neither are 0xAAAA nor 0x5555 because they
are identical or similar to the preamble. The guideline is that the sync word should contain an alternating sequence of 0's and 1's which is distinctly different from the preamble and that no sequence of 0's or 1's hould be too long. A sequence of 4(5)bits or more may be considered too long. Personally I would try to limit the sequence to 3 bits unless there s a pressing need for more. The number of 0’s and 1’s should also be close to equal.


Also remember that if you're using 32bit sync word that it's duplicated twice.