A Novel Nondata-Aided Synchronization Algorithm for MSK-Type-Modulated Signals

A novel nondata-aided feedforward algorithm for frequency and phase offset estimation of minimum shift keying (MSK)-modulated signals with joint symbol timing recovery is presented. While having relatively low complexity, it allows to operate at low signal-to-noise ratio for fully coherent demodulator. The proposed algorithm relies on a new signal transform operation that is used to extract symbol timing as well as frequency and phase offset information and a corrector that derotates the received signal prior to demodulation using the estimators´ outputs. Simulation results for precoded-type MSK in an additive white Gaussian noise channel illustrate advantages of the proposed algorithm including lower variance of the symbol timing estimator compared to previous approaches.