An Efficient Correlation-Based Reception Scheme for Satellite Communications

Considering limited pilot and storage resources in satellite communications, we propose an efficient correlation-based reception scheme consisting of a “parallel” frequency-phase estimation (PFPE) mode and a data blockwise compensation (DBC) scheme. In specific, the PFPE mode provides an autocorrelation (AC) frequency offset estimator and a maximum-likelihood (ML) phase offset estimator using a special but heuristic AC value; the DBC scheme uses a small amount of cross-correlation (CC) based compensation values to eliminate the impact of residual offsets on each data block. Simulation results show that with a small pilot overhead the proposed reception scheme can weaken “frequency-to-phase coupling” and achieve good error performance with a small demand for storage.