Performance analysis of blind carrier phase estimators for general QAM constellations

Large quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) constellations are currently us ed in throughput efficient high-speed communication applications such as di gital TV. For such large signal constellations, carrier-phase synchronizati on is a crucial problem because for efficiency reasons, the carrier acquisi tion must often be performed blindly, without the use of training or pilot sequences, The goal of the present paper is to provide thorough performance analysis of the blind carrier phase estimators that have been proposed in the literature and to assess their relative merits.