A modified dichotomous search frequency estimator

The estimation of the frequency of a sinusoidal signal has been dealt with extensively in the literature. In this letter, we examine the dichotomous search of the periodogram peak algorithm. We provide an insight into the need to pad the data with zeros in order to achieve a performance that is comparable to the Cramer-Rao lower bound (CRB). We also propose a modified dichotomous search estimator that operates on the unpadded data sequence resulting in a computational saving. The modified dichotomous search is shown to have a performance that is comparable with the CRB.