Adaptive+darwinian approach for the estimation and tracking of time delays

The problem of time delay estimation and tracking is tackled with three different algorithms: a gradient-like scheme, a Darwinian Algorithm (a global optimisation procedure inspired on Nature's evolution mechanisms) and a third approach, mixture of the previous two. While the gradient scheme easily finds an accurate estimate when properly initialised, it misleads the track when badly initialised or when jumps occur in the delay. The Darwinian Algorithm appears more robust to delay changes but too slow and less accurate. Our combined solution outperforms the other two in convergence capabilities without notably degrading accuracy nor speed.