Time-difference-of-arrival estimation for noncircular signals using information theory

This paper addresses the time-difference-of-arrival (TDOA) estimation problem for a noncircular source, which is usually encountered in the context of radio communications. To exploit the second-order statistics (SOS) noncircularity of such signals, an information-theoretical measure is employed in designing the new TDOA estimator. While the classical cross-correlation (CC) method uses only the correlation measure of a source, the proposed method simultaneously uses both the correlation and conjugate correlation measures of a source. Since the SOS of a noncircular signal is not only determined by the correlation function but also by the conjugate correlation function, the proposed method utilizes the SOS information of a noncircular signal more comprehensively than the popular CC method. Simulation results demonstrated the effectiveness of the new algorithm compared to the CC algorithm.