A TDOA Technique with Super-Resolution Based on the Volume Cross-Correlation Function

Time difference of arrival (TDOA) is widely used in wireless localization systems. Among the enormous approaches of TDOA, high resolution TDOA algorithms have drawn much attention for its ability to resolve closely spaced signal delays in multipath environment. However, the state-of-art high resolution TDOA algorithms still have performance weakness on resolving time delays in a wireless channel with dense multipath effect. In this paper, we propose a novel TDOA algorithm with super resolution based on a multi-dimensional cross-correlation function: the volume cross-correlation function (VCC). Theoretical analyses are provided to justify the feasibility of the proposed TDOA algorithm, and numerical simulations also show an excellent time resolution capability of the algorithm in multipath environment.