CHARACTERIZATION OF THRESHOLD FOR SINGLE TONE MAXIMUM-LIKELIHOOD FREQUENCY ESTIMATION

This paper presents a simple and direct approach to understanding the threshold effect associated with maximum likelihood estimation of the frequency of a single complex tone, Motivation for the approach, stemm ing from known results in the field of phase locked loops, is given, T t is shown both theoretically and experimentally that the onset of thr eshold can he directly characterized by a single, easily computed para meter, namely the Cramer-Rao bound on the phase estimation error varia nce.