Improving SNR estimation for autonomous radio receivers

We have demonstrated that the performance (as measured by its variance) of a popular SNR estimator can be improved by increasing the number of observables per symbol (accomplished by partitioning the symbol interval into a larger (than two) even number of subdivisions) but still processing them in successive pairs. We have shown that the amount of improvement is a function of the true SNR being estimated and continues to increase monotonically with increasing SNR. Despite its ad hoc nature, the modified estimator tracks the Cramer-Rao bound on the variance of SNR estimators with known or unknown data over the entire range of SNR values, a property not previously achievable with the traditional version of this estimator.