First arrival detection based on channel estimation for positioning in wireless OFDM systems

Based on the estimated channel, this paper presents a new method for first arrival estimation for positioning application in OFDM mobile communication systems. In the new method, the characteristics of the information theoretic criteria is exploited to estimate the time of arrival (TOA). The information theoretic criteria is established on the basic of the different statistical characteristics of noise and the mobile channel. In the proposed algorithm, the calculation of the autocorrelation matrix and their eigenvalues are not required. Therefore, the complexity of the proposed method is low. Simulation results show that the performance of system in terms of the detection rate is very high. An accurate estimation of the first arrival path (or the time of arrival) can be obtained even though the first arrival path is strongly attenuated and the system suffers from strong additive noise.