Patent ID: 7606342

Claim:
A method of tracking a received signal having a known preamble followed by a message portion, comprising the steps of: (a) tracking the received signal in accordance with tracking parameters to thereby provide a tracked signal; (b) providing estimated tracking parameters by processing said known preamble of the received signal during an estimation interval; (c) causing the received signal to be tracked in accordance with said estimated tracking parameters; (d) providing samples of said tracked signal by sampling said tracked signal; (e) delaying said preamble; (f) causing said samples to be provided during a training interval after said estimation interval by sampling the delayed preamble; (g) generating tracking error parameters during the training interval by processing said samples of the delayed preamble; and (h) causing said tracking of the received signal to be adjusted during the training interval in accordance with said tracking error parameters generated by step (g); wherein the duration of said delay is one-half the duration of said estimation interval so that any error in a coarse estimate of the carrier frequency of the received signal does not contribute to an absolute phase tracking error.