A Fine Frequency Estimation Algorithm Based on Fast Orthogonal Search (FOS) for Base Station Positioning Receivers

Abstract

Base station signals have been widely studied as a promising navigation and positioning signal. The time and code division-orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (TC-OFDM) signal is a novel communication and navigation fusion signal that can simultaneously implement communication and positioning services. The TC-OFDM signal multiplexes the pseudorandom noise (PRN) code, called positioning code, and the Chinese mobile multimedia broadcasting (CMMB) signal in the same frequency band. For positioning in the TC-OFDM receiver, it is necessary to acquire and track the PRN code phase and the carrier frequency. The tracking performance is directly influenced by the accuracy of the signal acquisition, especially the acquired carrier frequency accuracy. This paper focuses on the fine frequency acquisition of TC-OFDM receivers and proposes a novel fine frequency estimation algorithm, which uses a non-linear modelling method, called fast orthogonal search (FOS), to improve the frequency acquisition accuracy of TC-OFDM receivers. With this algorithm, the PRN code is first stripped off in coarse code phase. Then, the candidate functions at each of the interest frequencies are generated, which consist of pairs of sine and cosine terms. Finally, the FOS algorithm is used to detect the carrier frequency. Simulation and experimental results show that, compared with the current carrier frequency estimation algorithms, the proposed algorithm effectively improves carrier frequency estimation accuracy and then reduces the time to the first fix.