A Carrier Frequency Estimation Method of MPSK Signals and its Systolic VLSI Implementation

In this paper we present an autocorrelation-based method for estimating the carrier frequency offset of an MPSK signal with random data modulation. Although autocorrelation based techniques imply heavy usage of hardware resourses this technique is scalable and lends itself to systolic VLSI implementations. The performance of the open-loop estimator presented is close to Cramer-Rao lower bound (CRLB) for the frequency estimation from a block of random MPSK symbols at low signal-to-noise ratios (SNR). The estimator can be used in frequency acquisition of burst and continuous modems operating under low SNR and large frequency offset conditions.