Time-delay estimation for deterministic transient signals in a multipath environment

The authors consider the problem of estimating the arrival times of overlapping ocean-acoustic signals from a noisy received waveform which consists of scaled and delayed replicas of a deterministic transient signal. It is assumed that the transmitted signal and the number of paths in the multipath environment are known. Previously developed tools for finding least-squares estimates of the amplitude and time delay of each path are combined to form a complete algorithm. The algorithm is a function of several data-dependent parameters, and rules for choosing these parameters are given. The algorithm is demonstrated on a synthetic four-path example in which the paths cannot be resolved by standard cross-correlation techniques