Time Delay Estimator Based on Frequency Estimation Approach

Abstract

In this Letter, the problem of estimating the time-difference-of-arrival between signals received at two spatially separated sensors is addressed. By taking discrete Fourier transform of the sensor outputs, time delay estimation corresponds to finding the frequency of a noisy sinusoid with time-varying amplitude. The generalized weighted linear predictor is utilized to estimate the time delay and it is shown that its estimation accuracy attains Cramér-Rao lower bound.