Maximum Likelihood estimation of time delays in multipath acoustic channel

A maximum likelihood (ML) estimator is developed for determining time delays in multipath acoustic channel in the presence of uncorrelated noise. The performance of the ML estimator is compared with a generalized autocorrelation estimator (GAE) and Cramer-Rao lower bound (CRLB) for resolvable multipath, via computer simulation. Simulation results show that the performance of the ML estimator is superior to the GAE and is close to CRLB.