Tag: BPSK

CSP-Based Time-Difference-of-Arrival Estimation

Time-delay estimation can be used to determine the angle-of-arrival of a signal impinging on two spatially separated signals. This estimation problem gets hard when there is cochannel interference present.

Let’s discuss an application of cyclostationary signal processing (CSP): time-delay estimation. The idea is that sampled data is available from two antennas (sensors), and there is a common signal component in each data set. The signal component in one data set is the time-delayed or time-advanced version of the component in the other set. This can happen when a plane-wave radio frequency (RF) signal propagates and impinges on the two antennas. In such a case, the RF signal arrives at the sensors with a time difference proportional to the distance between the sensors along the direction of propagation, and so the time-delay estimation is also commonly referred to as time-difference-of-arrival (TDOA) estimation.

tdoa_physical_setup
Figure 1. Illustration of the geometric relationship between a transmitter and two receivers in the context of time-delay estimation (or time-difference-of-arrival estimation).

Consider the diagram shown in Figure 1. A distant transmitter emits a signal that is well-modeled as a plane wave once it reaches our two receivers. An individual wavefront of the signal arrives at the two sensors at different times.

The line segment AB is perpendicular to the direction of propagation for the RF signal. The angle \theta is called the angle of arrival (AOA). If we could estimate the AOA, we can tell the direction from which the signal arrives, which could be useful in a variety of settings. Since the triangle ABC is a right triangle, we have

\displaystyle \cos (\theta) = \frac{x}{d}. \hfill (1)

When \theta = 0, the wavefronts first strike receiver 2, then must propagate over x=d meters before striking receiver 1. On the other hand, when \theta = 90^\circ, each wavefront strikes the two receivers simultaneously. In the former case, the TDOA is maximum, and in the latter it is zero. The TDOA can be negative too, so that 180^\circ azimuthal degrees can be determined by estimating the TDOA.

In general, the wavefront must traverse x meters between striking receiver 2 and striking receiver 1,

\displaystyle x = d \cos(\theta). \hfill (2)

Assuming the speed of propagation is c meters/sec, the TDOA is given by

\displaystyle D = \frac{x}{c} = \frac{d\cos{\theta}}{c} \mbox{\rm \ \ seconds}. \hfill (3)

In this post I’ll review several methods of TDOA estimation, some of which employ CSP and some of which do not. We’ll see some of the advantages and disadvantages of the various classes of methods through inspection, simulation, and application to captured data. Consider this post as a starting point to a study or development effort rather than as a definitive performance characterization.

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Square-Root Raised-Cosine PSK/QAM

SRRC PSK and QAM signals form important components of more complicated real-world communication signals. Let’s look at their second-order cyclostationarity here.

Let’s look at a somewhat more realistic textbook signal: The PSK/QAM signal with independent and identically distributed symbols (IID) and a square-root raised-cosine (SRRC) pulse function. The SRRC pulse is used in many practical systems and in many theoretical and simulation studies. In this post, we’ll look at how the free parameter of the pulse function, called the roll-off parameter or excess bandwidth parameter, affects the power spectrum and the spectral correlation function.

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Second-Order Estimator Verification Guide

Use this post to help check the accuracy of your second-order CSP estimators.

Update September 2022: New section on the non-conjugate and conjugate coherence function.

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In this post I provide some tools for the do-it-yourself CSP practitioner. One of the goals of this blog is to help new CSP researchers and students to write their own estimators and algorithms. This post contains some spectral correlation function and cyclic autocorrelation function estimates and numerically evaluated formulas that can be compared to those produced by anybody’s code.

The signal of interest is, of course, our rectangular-pulse BPSK signal with symbol rate 0.1 (normalized frequency units) and carrier offset 0.05. You can download a MATLAB script for creating such a signal here.

The formula for the SCF for a textbook BPSK signal is published in several places (The Literature [R47], My Papers [6]) and depends mainly on the Fourier transform of the pulse function used by the textbook signal.

We’ll compare the numerically evaluated spectral correlation formula with estimates produced by my version of the frequency-smoothing method (FSM). The FSM estimates and the theoretical functions are contained in a MATLAB mat file here. (I had to change the extension of the mat file from .mat to .doc to allow posting it to WordPress–change it back after downloading. It is a zipped .mat file as of 12/2/22.) In all the results shown here and that you can download, the processed data-block length is 65536 samples and the FSM smoothing width is 0.02 Hz. A rectangular smoothing window is used. For all cycle frequencies except zero (non-conjugate), a zero-padding factor of two is used in the FSM.

For the cyclic autocorrelation, we provide estimates using two methods: inverse Fourier transformation of the spectral correlation estimate and direct averaging of the second-order lag product in the time domain.

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Textbook Signals

Yes, the CSP Blog uses the simplest idealized cyclostationary digital signal–rectangular-pulse BPSK–to connect all the different aspects of CSP. But don’t mistake these ‘textbook’ signals for the real world.

What good is having a blog if you can’t offer a rant every once in a while? In this post I talk about what I call textbook signals, which are mathematical models of communication signals that are used by many researchers in statistical signal processing for communications.

We’ve already encountered, and used frequently, the most common textbook signal of all: rectangular-pulse BPSK with independent and identically distributed (IID) bits. We’ve been using this signal to illustrate the cyclostationary signal processing concepts and estimators as they have been introduced. It’s a good choice from the point of view of consistency of all the posts and it is easy to generate and to understand. However, it is not a good choice from the perspective of realism. It is rare to encounter a textbook BPSK signal in the practice of signal processing for communications.

I use the term textbook because the textbook signals can be found in standard textbooks, such as Proakis (The Literature [R44]). Textbook signals stand in opposition to signals used in the world, such as OFDM in LTE, slotted GMSK in GSM, 8PAM VSB with synchronization bits in ATSC-DTV, etc.

Typical communication signals combine a textbook signal with an access mechanism to yield the final physical-layer signal–the signal that is actually transmitted (My Papers [11], [16]). What is important for us, here at the CSP Blog, is that this combination usually results in a signal with radically different cyclostationarity than the textbook component. So it is not enough to understand textbook signals’ cyclostationarity. We must also understand the cyclostationarity of the real-world signal, which may be sufficiently complex to render mathematical modeling and analysis impossible (at least for me). (See also some relevant examples of real-world signals here and here.)

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CSP Estimators: The Time Smoothing Method

The non-blind spectral-correlation estimator called the TSM is favored when one wishes to avoid long FFTs.

In a previous post, we introduced the frequency-smoothing method (FSM) of spectral correlation function (SCF) estimation. The FSM convolves a pulse-like smoothing window g(f) with the cyclic periodogram to form an estimate of the SCF. An advantage of the method is that it allows fine control over the spectral resolution of the SCF estimate through the choice of g(f), but the drawbacks are that it requires a Fourier transform as long as the data-record undergoing processing, and the convolution can be expensive. However, the expense of the convolution can be mitigated by using rectangular g(f).

In this post, we introduce the time-smoothing method (TSM) of SCF estimation. Instead of averaging (smoothing) the cyclic periodogram over spectral frequency, multiple cyclic periodograms are averaged over time. When the non-conjugate cycle frequency of zero is used, this method produces an estimate of the power spectral density, and is essentially the Bartlett spectrum estimation method. The TSM can be found in My Papers [6] (Eq. (54)), and other places in the literature.

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The Spectral Correlation Function for Rectangular-Pulse BPSK

Let’s make the spectral correlation function a little less abstract by showing it for a simple textbook BPSK signal.

In this post, I show the non-conjugate and conjugate spectral correlation functions (SCFs) for the rectangular-pulse BPSK signal we generated in a previous post. The theoretical SCF can be analytically determined for a rectangular-pulse BPSK signal with independent and identically distributed bits (see My Papers [6] for example or The Literature [R1]). The cycle frequencies are, of course, equal to those for the CAF for rectangular-pulse BPSK. In particular, for the non-conjugate SCF, we have cycle frequencies of \alpha = k f_{bit} for all integers k, and for the conjugate SCF we have \alpha = 2f_c \pm k f_{bit}.

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The Cyclic Autocorrelation for Rectangular-Pulse BPSK

Let’s look at a specific example of the cyclic autocorrelation function: the textbook rectangular-pulse BPSK signal with IID symbols.

The cyclic autocorrelation function (CAF) for rectangular-pulse BPSK can be derived as a relatively simple closed-form expression (see My Papers [6] for example or The Literature [R1]). It can be estimated in a variety of ways, which we will discuss in future posts. The non-conjugate cycle frequencies for the signal are harmonics of the bit rate, k f_{bit}, and the conjugate cycle frequencies are the non-conjugate cycle frequencies offset by the doubled carrier, or 2f_c + k f_{bit}.

Recall that our simulated rectangular-pulse BPSK signal has 10 samples per bit, or a bit rate of 0.1, and a carrier offset of 0.05, all in normalized units (meaning the sampling rate is unity). We’ve previously selected a sampling rate of 1.0 MHz to provide a little physical realism; let’s do that here too. This choice means the bit rate is 100 kHz and the carrier offset frequency is 50 kHz. From these numbers, we see that the non-conjugate cycle frequencies are k 100 kHz, and that the conjugate cycle frequencies are 2(50) + k 100 kHz, or 100 + k 100 kHz.

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Creating a Simple CS Signal: Rectangular-Pulse BPSK

We’ll use this simple textbook signal throughout the CSP Blog to illustrate and tie together all the different aspects of CSP.

To test the correctness of various CSP estimators, we need a sampled signal with known cyclostationary parameters. Additionally, the signal should be easy to create and understand. A good candidate for this kind of signal is the binary phase-shift keyed (BPSK) signal with rectangular pulse function.

PSK signals with rectangular pulse functions have infinite bandwidth because the signal bandwidth is determined by the Fourier transform of the pulse, which is a sinc() function for the rectangular pulse. So the rectangular pulse is not terribly practical–infinite bandwidth is bad for other users of the spectrum. However, it is easy to generate, and its statistical properties are known.

So let’s jump in. The baseband BPSK signal is simply a sequence of binary (\pm 1) symbols convolved with the rectangular pulse. The MATLAB script make_rect_bpsk.m does this and produces the following plot:

rect_bpsk_time_domain
Figure 1. Time-domain plot of a baseband (not yet modulated by a carrier) rectangular-pulse BPSK signal with bit rate 1/10.

The signal alternates between amplitudes of +1 and -1 randomly. After frequency shifting and adding white Gaussian noise, we obtain the power spectrum estimate:

rect_bpsk_psd
Figure 2. Power spectrum estimate for a simulated rectangular-pulse BPSK signal in noise. The signal power is unity, or 0 dB, and the noise power is 1/10, or -10 dB. The bit rate is 1/10 and the carrier offset frequency is 0.05. Note that the nulls (minima) of the signal spectrum are at 0.05 \pm k/10, or harmonics of the bit rate offset by the carrier.

The power spectrum plot shows why the rectangular-pulse BPSK signal is not popular in practice. The range of frequencies for which the signal possesses non-zero average power is infinite, so it will interfere with signals “nearby” in frequency. However, it is a good signal for us to use as a test input in all of our CSP algorithms and estimators.

The MATLAB script that creates the BPSK signal and the plots above is here. It is an m-file but I’ve stored it in a .doc file due to WordPress limitations I can’t yet get around.