Transmission parameter estimation for an autoconfigurable receiver

A satellite-to-ground communication link may sometimes be interrupted by an unexpected event, causing the satellite transponder to reset to an unknown state and begin transmitting in a different mode, resulting in a loss of data. We describe procedures to aid in reconfiguring the ground-station receiver by determining the new transmission parameters automatically from the received signal itself. We discuss the procedures based on the signal statistics as well as on the information about the data-frame structure. Simulations show that the latter approach can work for reasonably sized problems.