Minimum entropy approach for carrier frequency recovery

Abstract

This paper introduces a new carrier frequency recovery approach. It can be applied before modulation classification and/or demodulation of the M-ary PSK signals. It relies on the entropy of the instantaneous phase probability density function, and uses the fact that it reaches minimum when the receiver is fine-tuned to the unknown carrier frequency. This estimator is applicable to algorithms requiring high accuracy without any a priori knowledge concerning modulation scheme, signal contents (bit-stream), or its timing parameters. Simulation results have proved the robustness of the algorithm: for low carrier to noise ratios (CNR), corresponding variances are proportional and close to Cramer-Rao lower bounds (CRLB). For CNR greater than 20 dB, they are constant and limited by the resolution of the algorithm.