Low-complexity carrier-phase estimator suited to on-board implementation

In this paper, we describe and analyze a new feedforward carrier-phase algorithm suited to on-board digital implementation. The algorithm studied here (for phase recovery of M-ary phase-shift keying signals) has the particularity to perform all calculations in polar coordinates in order to reduce the implementation complexity. The defined phase estimator is operating at very low signal-to-noise ratio with small frequency offsets. Its performance is close to those of the Viterbi and Viterbi algorithm.