Patent ID: 7844017

Claim:
A method of detecting a carrier frequency in a received signal, comprising the steps of: (a) processing the received signal to generate a test signal at the carrier frequency; (b) processing the test signal to provide an amplitude spectrum of samples at different test frequencies; and (c) processing the amplitude spectrum to detect the carrier frequency in accordance with the test frequency at which there is a test statistic of the highest magnitude; wherein step (c) comprises the steps of: (d) determining the magnitude of the test statistic by processing a signal statistic in relation to a noise statistic, wherein the signal statistic is the amplitude of the largest-amplitude sample; and (e) determining the noise statistic by averaging the amplitudes of samples outside of an exclusion region that includes the largest-amplitude sample, a number of samples immediately above the spectral position of the largest-amplitude sample and a number of samples immediately below the spectral position of the largest-amplitude sample; wherein step (d) comprises the step of: (f) determining the magnitude of the test statistic for an individual segment of the amplitude spectrum by subtracting from the signal statistic a multiple of the noise statistic and a detection parameter.