A protective synchronization scheme （ProSync） for the non-contiguous orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing （NC-OFDM） system is proposed in this paper, aiming to minimize the impact of cross-band interference in opportunistic dynamic spectrum sharing networks. ProSync partly shrinks the preamble at the transmitter and exploits two multi-band filters at the receiver. By doing so, the potential interference suffered by NC-OFDM users, including both the cross-band interference and self interference, can be greatly reduced. Simulation results verify the effectiveness of ProSync, which is able to lower the carrier frequency offset （CFO） estimation error by up to 50%, compared with the traditional method.
