Digital interpolating peak locator

Locating the position of the peak of an analog signal after it has been sampled is a challenging task with wide-ranging applications. The conventional methods of performing this operation involve either upsampling the digital signal or fitting a parabolic curve to the digital samples. This paper proposes a technique for finding the approximate location of the peak in an analog signal after it has been sampled. The technique involves transforming the sampled data into the logarithm domain and then fitting a parameterized function that is characteristic of the analog signal to the two points neighbouring the peak. The location of the peak is calculated from the parameters obtained in the fitting process. Simulation results show that the proposed estimator significantly outperforms the conventional estimators at a comparable or lower hardware cost.