A novel low-complex and low-memory method for accurate single-tone frequency estimation

In this paper a new method for accurate frequency estimation of a single sinusoid is described. The main feature of the proposed method, mainly based on a simple digital non-linear filter, is its intrinsic low complexity development and use. The method, in fact, needs about 2N_s arithmetic operations, where N_s is the number of samples, and has very small memory requirements even when high accuracy is needed. Furthermore, we show that in case of moderate and high signal to noise ratio levels, the method is able to reach the Cramer-Rao Lower Bound (CRLB) but at a lower implementation cost.