IEEE 802.11 n-based TDOA performance evaluation in an indoor multipath environment

In this article an experimental setup is presented to evaluate Time Difference of Arrival (TDOA) range estimations based on WiFi test signals conform to the IEEE 802.11 n standard with a conventional cross-correlation (CC) technique and the super-resolution technique Minimum Norm (MinNorm). It can be shown that MinNorm improves TDOA estimation significantly. With a careful choice of the segmentation techniques the covariance estimate can be further improved resulting in low failure rates combined with better mean error characteristics, even when the true number of delay components is slightly misestimated, as it might be in strong multipath environments.