On the blind estimation of the parameters of continuous phase modulated signals

In this paper, a blind estimator of the technical parameters of continuous phase modulated (CPM) signals is proposed. It consists in estimating jointly the modulation index, the symbol period and the frequency offset. It is based on the following observations. First, the inverse of the index is the smallest positive real number a CPM signal should be raised to in order to generate a deterministic harmonic signal; second, the frequencies of the harmonic signal are simply related to the symbol period and the carrier frequency. The practical implementation of this joint estimator is described and the asymptotic behavior of the estimation error is studied. If N is the number of signaling intervals, the estimate of the modulation index is shown to converge to a non-Gaussian distribution at rate 1/N, while the estimate of the frequency offset and the estimate of the symbol period converge at rate 1/N^3/2. We also investigate the case where the modulation index and the symbol period are available at the receiver side. An estimator of the frequency offset is proposed by adapting the above joint estimator to the latter case. The asymptotic behavior of this estimator is studied and compared with the case where all of the parameters are unknown, so as to evaluate the possible degradation of the performance due to the ignorance of certain technical parameters. Simulations results sustain our theoretical claims.