Frequency estimation in slowly fading multipath channels

This paper concerns the estimation of a frequency offset of a known (pilot) signal propagated through a slowly fading multipath channel, such that channel parameters are considered to be constant over the observation interval. We derive a maximum-likelihood (ML) frequency estimation algorithm for additive Gaussian noise and path amplitudes having complex Gaussian distribution when covariance matrices of the fading and noise are known; we consider in detail the algorithm for the white noise and Rayleigh fading, in particular, for independent fading of path amplitudes and pilot signals with diagonal autocorrelation matrices. For the latter scenario, we also derive an ML frequency estimator when the power delay profile is unknown, but the noise variance and bounds for the path amplitude variances are specified; in particular, this algorithm can be used when path delays and amplitude variances are unknown. Finally, we consider frequency estimators which do not use a priori information about the noise variance; these algorithms are also operable without timing synchronization. All the frequency estimators exploit the multipath diversity by combining periodograms of multipath signal components and searching for the maximum. of the combined statistic. For implementation of the algorithms, we use a fast Fourier transform-based coarse search and fine dichotomous search. We perform simulations to compare the algorithms. The simulation results demonstrate high accuracy performance of the proposed frequency estimators in wide signal-to-noise ratio and frequency acquisition range.