Frequency offset estimator for upstream cable signals
AssigneeVecima Networks Inc.
InventorsBrian Berscheid, Eric Salt, Ha Nguyen
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
In a DOCSIS transmission network, it is necessary for an upstream receiver to estimate and correct for errors in the carrier frequency of the transmission based upon observations of a preamble sequence. This task is complicated by the fact that microreflections in the upstream channels cause intersymbol interference, which tends to bias the frequency estimation circuit. An economical, ISI-immune algorithm is provided for estimating the carrier frequency of upstream transmissions. The arrangement improves the reliability of the frequency estimates in the presence of ISI, thereby reducing the overhead and increasing the throughput of the upstream channels.
Claims4
A method of estimating the frequency offset of an RF or IF signal which has been downconverted to baseband comprising:
- beginning each transmission with a signal preamble consisting of a sequence of symbols known to both transmitter and receiver;
- utilizing the received version of this signal preamble in the receiver in order to calculate the frequency offset present in the transmission;
- wherein the calculation is performed by constructing a composite estimator which is an average of the output of a series of elementary estimators;
- wherein each of the elementary estimators makes use of only a subset of the total signal preamble;
- and wherein the preamble subsets have the following characteristics:
- all of the preamble subsets comprise a series of consecutive symbols;
- all of the preamble subsets used by the elementary estimators must contain the same number M+1 of symbols;
- no two preamble subsets may start or end on the same symbol;
- wherein each elementary estimator estimates the frequency offset by:
- using a 1 symbol wide differential detector and angle computation device in order to determine the angular difference between each pair of symbols in the preamble subset;
- and computing the average value of this angular difference.
A method of estimating the frequency offset of an RF or IF signal which has been downconverted to baseband comprising:
- beginning each transmission with a signal preamble consisting of a sequence of symbols known to both transmitter and receiver;
- utilizing the received version of this signal preamble in the receiver in order to calculate the frequency offset present in the transmission;
- wherein the calculation is performed by constructing a composite estimator which is an average of the output of a series of elementary estimators;
- wherein each of the elementary estimators makes use of only a subset of the total signal preamble;
- wherein the preamble subsets have the following characteristics:
- all of the preamble subsets comprise a series of consecutive symbols;
- all of the preamble subsets used by the elementary estimators must contain the same number M+1 of symbols;
- no two preamble subsets may start or end on the same symbol;
- and wherein each elementary estimator estimates the frequency offset by:
- using an M symbol wide differential detector and angle computation device in order to determine the angular difference between the first and last symbol in the subset;
- and dividing this angular difference by M.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.