A fast efficient technique for the estimation of frequency: interpretation and generalisation

Abstract

In Quinn & Fernandes (1991), an iterative technique was presented for the estimation of the frequency of a sinusoid in the presence of noise. The technique is more robust to poor initial estimates than is the periodogram maximiser. A generalisation to the case of multiple sinusoids is presented in this paper, and it is shown that the original estimator may be interpreted as the maximiser of a smoothed version of the periodogram. Keywords: Frequency estimation; Periodogram; Sinusoidal regression.