Accurate Time Delay Estimation Based on SINC Filtering

摘要

Time delay estimation is very important in many applications such as radar, sonar, communication, geological exploration, biomedical engineering, etc. In this paper, a SINC filtering algorithm (SFA) is proposed, which can get accurate time delay estimate when little or no prior knowledge about the statistical characteristics of the received signals is known. SFA is based on the theory that time delay estimation can be transformed to parameter estimation of a SINC filter, and time delay estimate can be obtained when the maximum of the filter coefficients is known. When the time delay of two received signals is formulated, LMS algorithm can be used to get the estimate of the SINC filter coefficients, then the time delay estimate can be obtained. Compared with the traditional parabolic fitting method, the SFA can get more accurate results without increasing the computation burden. Computer simulations and water tank experiments both indicate that the SFA can obtain accurate time delay estimation.