NDA Waveform Estimation in the Low-SNR Regime

This correspondence addresses the problem of nondata-aided waveform estimation for digital communications. Based on the unconditional maximum likelihood criterion, the main contribution of this correspondence is the derivation of a closed-form solution to the waveform estimation problem in the low signal-to-noise ratio regime. The proposed estimation method is based on the second-order statistics of the received signal and a clear link is established between maximum likelihood estimation and correlation matching techniques. Compression with the signal-subspace is also proposed to improve the robustness against the noise and to mitigate the impact of abnormals or outliers.