Pilot-assisted Doppler frequency estimation

• Main Author: KIND, ADRIEL P
• Format: Patent
• Language: English; French; German
• Published: 23.01.2008
• Subjects: ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE; ELECTRICITY; TRANSMISSION OF DIGITAL INFORMATION, e.g. TELEGRAPHICCOMMUNICATION

A technique for estimating the Doppler frequency of an input signal comprising a pilot signal. In one embodiment, the technique comprises: (a) accumulating a plurality of samples from the input signal over a specified time duration to derive a channel tap estimate; (b) obtaining a sequence of channel tap estimates by repeating step (a) until a specified number of channel tap estimates have been accumulated; (c) performing a Fourier transform of the sequence of channel tap estimates to obtain a complex sequence of values; (d) finding the smallest index value for which a power spectral distribution function of the complex sequence of values exceeds a specified threshold; and (e) obtaining an estimate of the Doppler frequency by dividing the smallest index value found in step (d) by the product of the specified number of channel tap estimates and the specified time duration.