Nonparametric estimation of mean Doppler and spectral width

This paper proposes a new nonparametric method for estimation of spectral moments of a zero-mean Gaussian process immersed in additive white Gaussian noise. Although the technique is valid for any order moment, particular attention is given to the mean Doppler (first moment) and to the spectral width (square root of the centered second spectral moment). By assuming that the power spectral density (PSD) of the underlying process is bandlimited, the maximum-likelihood estimates of its spectral moments are derived. A suboptimal estimate based on the sample covariance is also studied. Both methods are robust in the sense that they do not rely on any assumption concerning the PSD (besides being bandlimited). Under weak conditions, the set of estimates based on sample covariance is unbiased and strongly consistent. Compared with the classical pulse pair and the periodogram-based estimators, the proposed methods exhibit better statistical properties for asymmetric spectra and/or spectra with large spectral widths, while involving a computational burden of the same order.