Model‐based super‐resolution time‐delay estimation with sample rate consideration

Abstract

Time delay estimation is of great significance in multipath propagation to recover overlapped signals and identify the channel characteristics. However, achieving a high accuracy in this purpose may pose many problems in ultra-wideband (UWB) applications. In UWB systems, capturing a signal with high sampling rates cannot readily be done; hence classical methods for time delay estimation substantially lose their precision. To overcome this challenge, the authors incorporate a robust estimation approach and supplementary sampling process in a unified algorithm to retrieve time delays from signals with low sampling rates. Toward that pursuit, a model based least squares estimator is proposed as the main approach to calculate time delays and a modified method based on multiple signal classification (MUSIC) is also presented for comparison aim. Then, the authors have developed the algorithm by embedding two additional pre-processing steps of under sampling and interpolation to achieve a higher sampling rate and a better resolution. To show the high accuracy of work, root mean square error is computed in different values of time delay. Simulation and experiment results show the considerably higher precision of the proposed algorithm in comparison with presented MUSIC type method and also previously proposed methods in literature.