Minimum distance receivers for signal detection and parameter estimation

New results in the detection of known signals which are corrupted by additive noise and for an estimation of the parameters `arrival time´ and `amplitude´ are presented. In many applications it is of great interest to estimate the parameters with high precision. The new estimation algorithm is based on the minimization of a metric which is defined for vector representations of the known signal and the measured signal. It is assumed that the signal duration is finite and that the parameters `arrival time´ and `amplitude´ are completely unknown. It is shown that a minimum distance receiver can be simply adapted to a special signal-noise-configuration and that considerably better results can be obtained than with a correlation receiver. The algorithm is easily realizable with a digital system and can be used for on-line signal analysis