Comparison of four FFT-based frequency acquisition techniques for Costas loop BPSK signal demodulation

This paper discussed four open-loop frequency acquisition techniques for suppressed-carrier BPSK signals. The techniques, which do not require accurate symbol timing nor a data preamble sequence, employ fast Fourier transforms (FFT's) on the Costas loop phase detector output to detect the Doppler frequency offset. Performance of the full-, half-, and staggered-symbol integration techniques as well as the low-pass filter technique are compared in terms of the error signal output SNR's. Then, the probability of detecting the frequency offset is computed for the special case when the frequency of the tone to be detected coincides with one of the FFT-bin center frequencies. It is shown that the performance of the integration techniques depends strongly on the symbol timing offset. On the other hand, the detection probability for the one-pole arm filter technique depends directly on the filter bandwidth. The staggered integration technique is shown to have comparable performance to the low-pass filter technique for low-to-medium symbol SNR's but the latter is superior at high symbol SNR's.< >