A low latency and accurate procedure for sine-wave frequency estimation

This paper deals with an accurate and fast sine-wave frequency estimation procedure suitable for real-time applications where measurement latency is an issue. The procedure compensate the detrimental effect due to spectral interference from the fundamental image component that adversely affects the frequency estimates provided by the classical Interpolated Discrete Fourier Transform (IpDFT) method when a very small number of sine-wave cycles is acquired. The accuracies of the frequency estimators provided by the proposed procedure and the classical IpDFT method are compared through both computer simulations and experimental results in the case of pure sine-waves or sine-waves affected by wideband noise and harmonics. The procedure is simple to understand and to apply. The required processing effort is low and quite close to the effort required by the classical IpDFT method.