A method synchronizes a remote unit to a base station in a bandwidth efficient communication system and includes generating a clock signal at the base station. The clock signal is spread over a plurality of non-uniformly spaced discrete tones, thus creating a synchronization signal at the base station, which is transmitted from the base station and received at least one remote unit. Matched filtering is performed on the synchronization signal at the remote unit and the remote unit generates a remote clock signal synchronized with the synchronization signal, based on the matched filter output.