In this paper, a novel symbol synchronization method for OFDM systems is proposed. By using correlation of guard interval (GI) preceding the OFDM symbol, it not only improves the accuracy of symbol synchronization in channels with long and strong echoes, which could be the case in a single frequency network (SFN), but also is applicable in additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN), Ricean and Rayleigh channels.