Detection of fading overlapping multipath components

Overlapping multipath propagation is one of the main sources of mobile-positioning errors, especially in fast channel fading situations. In this paper we present a technique for detecting the existence of overlapping fading multipath components. Such information is vital for accurate resolving of overlapping multipath components as well as avoiding unnecessary computations and errors in single-path propagation cases. The proposed algorithm exploits the property that fading multipath components fade independently. An analysis of the proposed technique is performed to validate its functionality and to select the algorithm parameters. The paper also presents simulation results that show a high ability of the proposed technique to detect overlapping multipath components along with its impact on the accuracy of multipath resolving techniques.