Frequency estimation based on the cumulated Lomb-Scargle periodogram

We consider the problem of estimating the period of an unknown periodic function observed in additive Gaussian noise sampled at irregularly spaced time instants in a semiparametric setting. To solve this problem, we propose a novel estimator based on the cumulated Lomb-Scargle periodogram. We prove that this estimator is consistent, asymptotically Gaussian and we provide an explicit expression of the asymptotic variance. Some Monte Carlo experiments are then presented to support our claims. Copyright 2008 The Authors. Journal compilation 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd