Robust and accurate real-time estimation of sensors signal parameters by a DSP approach

This paper presents a spectral method for real-time frequency estimation as a robust and accurate solution when a square wave affected by impulsive noise is considered. The method, tailored for signal coming from typical resonant sensors (frequency from 2 kHz to 22 kHz), has been implemented and tested using a floating point Digital Signal Processor (DSP) and a sixteen-bit Analog to Digital Converter (ADC). The resulting glitch immunity greatly improves if compared with the classic solution based on Constant Elapsed Time, keeping the good performance, in terms of resolution (10/sup -6/) and measuring time (10 ms), of traditional high-cost laboratory instrumentation.