Peak and leading edge detection for time-of-arrival estimation in band-limited positioning systems

The performance of the peak and leading edge detection methods for time-of-arrival (TOA) estimation in band-limited systems is examined. Analytical expressions for the detection performance in the presence of both random noise and multipath interference are derived. A dimensionless performance factor is presented that allows simple comparisons of the TOA estimation algorithms. These equations allow the performance tradeoff analysis to be undertaken without the need for simulations. It is shown that the leading edge detection method has significantly better multipath mitigation characteristics than the peak detection one, but at the expense of inferior noise performance.