Phase-Based Frequency Estimation: A Review

Abstract

Fowler, M. L., Phase-Based Frequency Estimation: A Review, Digital Signal Processing 12 (2002) 590–615 This paper provides a review of efficient frequency estimation methods that use only the phases of the signal samples. Such methods continue to attract attention in various applications such as radar, electronic warfare, and next-generation communication systems. We present the details of the basic phase-based method, including its theoretical basis and its performance characterization, and provide an integrated presentation of its threshold behavior. In addition, we review several improvements, implementations, and extensions of the basic method and give some new results and viewpoints. In particular, the paper shows that Kay's method is equivalent to Tretter's method together with a simple phase unwrapping algorithm (thus, Kay's method does not really avoid phase unwrapping errors). We also show that a phase-based method for estimating chirp parameters has an advantage when applied to sinusoids: improved threshold behavior. We present a method that, unlike most of the other phase-based methods, can start processing the signal before knowing the number of samples.