Joint Physical Layer Frame Optimization and Carrier Synchronization for Satellite Communications

Abstract

In this paper, we discuss general data-framing and optimization, parallel frequency-phase estimation, and powerful frequency estimator for satellite communications. Based on the standard pilot-symbol-assisted-modulation (S-PSAM) frame, we design a general PSAM (G-PSAM) frame, whose corresponding data-aided & non-data-aided Cramér-Rao bound (DA&NDA CRB) is derived with respect to carrier frequency offset, time delay and phase offset, followed by its approximate form. Also, we provide a simple solution to the G-PSAM frame optimization by means of the approximate DA&NDA CRB and the control-variate method. With an unbiased auto-correlation (AC) value, we then propose a frequency-phase decoupler and develop a parallel frequency-phase estimation (PFPE) mode in terms of the serial frequency-phase estimation (SFPE) mode, where a <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">serial-to-parallel</i> estimation conversion can be implemented. Furthermore, we extend the AC frequency estimator in the PFPE mode as a powerful stepwise correlation-based one aiming at the target performance. Theoretical analysis and numerical results are provided to show the superiority of the optimized frames, the robustness of the PFPE mode, and the adaptability of the proposed frequency estimator with the optimized frames under different transmission systems.