Estimating sampling frequency offset

Question

I am searching a paper or article on this subject.

I have heard of a function that estimates the sampling frequency offset between nominal and actual (sample rate of samples) sampling frequency and corrects for the found value.

Particularly it is done by splitting the signal into blocks of block sized symbols and estimating the sampling time offset for each of the blocks. Then, the sampling time offset is corrected for by cyclic time shift of the individual blocks.

I have searched all over but didn't find any.

Answer 1

As mentioned in a comment, what you describe looks like a timing recovery algorithm for digital communications.

I can recommend two sources, an article and a chapter in a book, which give a nice introduction and overview of the topic in general:

1. L. R. Litwin, «Matched filtering and timing recovery in digital receivers», RF Design, pp. 32–48, Sep. 2001.

2. M. Rice, «Chapter 8. Symbol Timing Synchronization», in Digital Communications: a Discrete-Time Approach, Upper Saddle River, N.J: Pearson/Prentice Hall, 2009.

Answer 2

Look for carrier recovery (carrier frequency and phase, FLL, PLL) and clock recovery (DLL). All those digital circuits work the same way, they basically track one property of an incoming signal by looking at a the (filtered) output of a discriminator function.