Rayleigh-Quotient and Iterative-Threshold-Test-Based Blind TOA Estimation for IR-UWB Systems

This letter proposes a non-coherent blind time-of-arrival (TOA) estimation scheme for impulse radio ultra-wideband systems. The TOA estimation is performed in two consecutive phases: the Rayleigh-quotient theorem-based coarse-signal acquisition (CSA) and the iterative-threshold-test-based fine time estimation (FTE). The proposed scheme serves in a blind manner without demanding any a priori knowledge of the channel and the noise. Analysis and simulations demonstrate that the proposed scheme significantly increases the signal detection probability in CSA and ameliorates the TOA estimation accuracy in FTE.