A FREQUENCY OFFSET ESTIMATION AND COMPENSATION ALGORITHM FOR K/Ka‐BAND COMMUNICATIONS

Abstract

This paper presents a new open-loop technique for estimating and correcting Doppler frequency shift in K/Ka-band communication systems with special reference to the advanced communications technology satellite (ACTS) mobile terminal (AMT) modem, which utilizes square-wave pulse-shaped, binary differential phase shift-keyed (DPSK) modulation. The novelty of this estimation scheme is that it exploits the Doppler-induced phase shift over a fraction of a symbol interval to provide an estimate of the Doppler offset, without requiring symbol synchronization. Furthermore, by utilizing time-differential detection (delay-and-multiply), the proposed technique can tolerate much larger frequency offsets than existing open- or closed-loop techniques. Analytical results are provided for the variance of the above estimator and the error probability performance of the AMT is evaluated in the presence of the Doppler correction. Practical design considerations are also discussed, including a method for modifying the front end, digital bandlimiting filter in such a way that Doppler bias effects in the new estimator are eliminated. Simulation results reveal that, in general, performance improves with increasing data rates, i.e., the new frequency offset estimation/compensation algorithm induces a degradation from ideal of approximately 1 dB at a 6 dB energy per data symbol (bit) and a 2⋅4 kbps data rate. However, there is no appreciable degradation when the data rate is increased to 9⋅6 or 19⋅2 kbps.