This work presents a novel high-efficiency multiplierless symbol synchronization algorithm for IEEE 802.11x wireless local area networks (WLANs). In our proposed scheme, according to IEEE 802.11x specifications, the element of the local known training sequence in the frame header is approximated and represented by its nearest value of integer power of 2. The multiplication in the cross-correlation for OFDM symbol synchronization can be directly reduced to a shift operation. Therefore, the correlator in the OFDM symbol synchronization for IEEE 802.11x WLANs can be economically implemented by merely utilizing the logic resources in hardware without notable performance loss. Since the multiplers and adders are replaced by the simple shifters, the implementation complexity of the correlator is significantly reduced. Experimental results demonstrate that our proposed method can achieve almost the same performance as the original correlation algorithms with multipliers, and has higher correct detection probability than the existing multiplierless technique at given low SNR.