Detection of fading overlapping multipath components for mobile positioning systems

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) mandate for locating the position of wireless 911 callers is fueling research in the area of mobile-positioning technologies. Overlapping multipath propagation is one of the main sources of mobile-positioning errors, especially in fast channel fading situations. In this paper we develop a technique for detecting and providing an estimate of the number of overlapping fading multipath components. Such information is vital for accurate resolving of overlapping multipath components as well as avoiding unnecessary computations and errors in single-path propagation cases. The proposed technique exploits the fact that multipath components fade independently as well as the pulse shape symmetry. The paper also presents supporting simulation results.