Patent ID: 6947508

Claim:
A method for estimating one of the frequency (f a1 ) and the phase (φ a1 ) of a digital input signal (x(i)) having the following process steps: determining phase values (C a1 (i)) of the digital input signal (x(i)), summing the phase values (C a1 (j)) over a predetermined summation length N/B, which is a predetermined fraction 1/B of an observation length of N phase values (C 31 (i)), to create added-up phase values (S ai (i)), where B is a positive integer. reducing a sampling rate of the added-up phase values (S a1 (j)) by the factor N/B in comparison with a sampling rate (f a2 ) of the phase values (C a1 (i)), delaying the added-up phase values (S a1 (i)) with at least B−1 delay elements, each of which delays the added-up phase values (S a1 (i)) by one sampling period of the reduced sampling rate (f a2 ·B/N), adding up the delayed added-up phase values (S a1 (i)) to create a resulting pulse response (h f ) of the frequency so that one of the resulting pulse responses (h f ) of the frequency (f a1 ) is constant positive in a first interval, is zero in a second interval, and is constant negative in a third interval (42), and such that a resulting pulse response (h φ ) of the phase is constant in at least a middle interval of the observation length and is otherwise zero.