Frequency estimation of single tone signals with bit transition

Frequency estimation of a single tone signal is important in many applications. In this study, a frequency estimation algorithm is proposed for single tone signals modulated with unknown data. The proposed unbiased frequency estimator (UFE) uses discrete Fourier transform (DFT) coefficients to calculate the accurate frequency offset. To achieve better performance in a noisy environment, a biased frequency estimator (BFE) is obtained by applying trigonometric approximation to UFE. The Taylor expansion of BFE is also proposed to meet the computational complexity requirement in some real-time applications. The performance of the proposed algorithm is evaluated through Monte Carlo simulations, compared with conventional interpolated DFT-based algorithm and typical non-data-aided frequency estimation algorithm.