Cooperative feature-based TDOA estimation with multipath diversity

In this paper, we investigate the Zero-Padding (ZP) Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) technique to estimate Time Difference of Arrival (TDOA) in positioning applications. Statistical features of OFDM blocks (symbols) are adopted in this paper to achieve a bandwidth efficient transmission and a low computational burden for the TDOA estimation. We propose a multipath diversity scheme based on the virtual cooperative agents, which improves the transmission performance and enhances the block feature detection. We show in this paper that multipath diversity benefits the feature-based TDOA estimation as well.