Maximum-likelihood based rapid carrier acquisition architectures

Modern codes such as turbo and LDPC codes operate at low signal-to-noise ratios, which makes carrier synchronization a challenging problem. This paper first develops a new Monte-Carlo based method to derive Cramer-Rao lower bounds for non-data aided carrier synchronization. Using these theoretical results, it is shown that carrier frequency can in theory be acquired much more rapidly than existing techniques for the DVB-S2 waveform, a commercial satellite waveform, which has also been adopted for use in military satellite communications. The paper then develops practical realizations of the maximum-likelihood carrier synchronizers for non-data aided carrier synchronization. The proposed simplified architecture is also shown to have significantly lower acquisition times and better tracking performance than commonly used carrier synchronizers for DVB-S2.