Time-of-arrival estimation for IR-UWB systems in dense multipath environment

In this paper, a novel time-of-arrival estimation algorithm is proposed for impulse radio-based UWB systems in dense multipath environment. In particular, a dedicated ranging sequence with good cross-correlation property is proposed and a threshold-based search-back unit is introduced, with the purpose of supporting high-precision ranging even at low signal-to-noise ratio. An approximate closed-form expression on the optimal threshold is derived based on the Rayleigh statistical analysis, and its accuracy and tightness are verified by simulations. Results show that the proposed ranging scheme achieves an excellent mean absolute error performance in the order of nanoseconds without introducing too much latency.