Frequency estimation and tracking for low earth orbit satellites

We consider the frequency compensation problem for Ka Band low earth orbit (LEO) satellites. At Ka band both the local oscillator (LO) drifts and the Doppler shifts become significant. These must be estimated and removed before communication with the satellite is established. Large sampling rates result in short processing times and make the reduction of the estimator computation load imperative. A new algorithm, named guided search of the periodogram, is obtained by combining the dichotomous search algorithm and the interpolation on Fourier coefficients estimator. The new algorithm has improved performance with respect to the other two algorithms.