On the Blind Estimation of Chip Time of Time-Hopping Signals Through Minimization of a Multimodal Cost Function

In this correspondence, we focus on blind estimation of the chip duration of time-hopping signals by introducing a cost function based on time-of-arrival (ToA) folding over multiple observation sets. An optimization algorithm that takes advantage of the highly oscillatory behavior in the nearby of the global minimum is proposed and a performance bound for the chip time estimate is derived. The pertinence of our approach is shown through numerical results, considering alternative methods like periodogram and separable least squares line search. The proposed technique enables a good tradeoff between statistical accuracy and computational complexity.