Techniques are described that provide inter-symbol interference—(ISI) and multi-user interference—(MUI) resilient blind timing synchronization and low complexity demodulation in wireless communication systems. A nonzero mean symbol is transmitted with a predetermined period in a stream of zero mean symbols during a synchronization phase. Only zero mean symbols are transmitted outside of the synchronization phase. Blind or non-data aided synchronization is performed at the receiver while bypassing channel estimation. The techniques enable timing synchronization via energy detection and low-complexity demodulation by matching the received waveform to a synchronized aggregate template (SAT). The SAT is recovered by averaging samples of the received waveform during the synchronization phase. In this manner, the described techniques may be applied to single or multi-user narrowband, wideband, or ultra-wideband (UWB) wireless communication systems with fixed or ad hoc access, but are particularly advantageous for wideband or UWB multi-user ad hoc access.