A fast efficient technique for the estimation of frequency

SUMMARY: A technique is presented for the estimation of the frequency of a sinusoid in the presence of noise. The technique is based on fitting ARMA (2, 2) models iteratively, in a special way. The estimator is shown to be strongly consistent and as efficient as the least squares estimator of the frequency, or the periodogram maximizer. A simple accelerated version of the technique is shown to converge in a small number of iterations, the number depending on the accuracy of the initiator of the procedure. The results of a number of simulations are reported.