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Published in IET Radar, Sonar and Navigation
Received on 5th August 2011
doi: 10.1049/iet-rsn.2012.0002

ISSN 1751-8784

Super-resolution time delay estimation for

narrowband signal
X. Li X. Ma S. Yan C. Hou
Institute of Acoustics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, People’s Republic of China
E-mail: sfyan@ieee.org

Abstract: Multiple signal classification (MUSIC) time delay estimation is a classical and effective super-resolution method for
the wideband signal. However, when the transmitted signal becomes narrowband, the resolving power of this algorithm degrades
severely, and if the transmitted signal is continuous wave (CW), the algorithm does not work at all. As the noise subspace of time
delay correlation matrix will be contaminated by signal in narrowband scenario, MUSIC is unable to distinguish the closely
arrived echoes. In this study, a novel algorithm, named as diagonal loading least squares MUSIC (DL-LS-MUSIC), is
proposed to solve the problem. The correlation matrix is reconstructed by the channel response which is estimated by DL-LS.
With a pre-processing procedure, MUSIC time delay estimation becomes robust and it is proved by simulation. Furthermore,
the pool experiment indicates the novel algorithm can estimate time delays more accurately than the original MUSIC
especially for CW signals.

1 Introduction envelope variation [9], the estimator’s effect is still

In the past few decades, time delay estimation has been an
research topic of significant practical importance in many
applications such as wireless communication [1], matched
field [2, 3], acoustic tomography [4] etc.
The pioneering work on this area can be classified into two
categories [5]: time-of-arrival (TOA) and time-difference-of-
arrival (TDOA). TOA, which estimates the time delays
between the transmit signal and its echoes, is widely
applied in active system using single channel data. TDOA
estimates the time differences among echoes extracted from
multichannel channel data. TOA algorithms are treated in
this paper with the assumption of multipath channel.
Many conventional algorithms take advantage of the
cross-relation between the transmitted signal and the
received signal. However, Rayleigh restriction limits
the resolution of these algorithms. For a better resolution
when the echoes are closely arrived, super-resolution
estimator is introduced.
Multiple signal classification (MUSIC) is a classical
super-resolution algorithm, which was firstly proposed to
estimate direction-of-arrival (DOA) and frequency. Later,
MUSIC was applied to estimate time delay in time domain
using ‘array manifold vectors’ with multiple sensors data
[6]. For single sensor data, the literatures [7] and [8]
suggested to transform the received data into frequency
domain to employ MUSIC algorithm. All of these
algorithms are only suitable for wideband signals. For
narrowband signals (the bandwidth to carrier frequency is
much smaller than 1), MUSIC fails to distinguish the
overlapping echoes, its resolution power is degraded to the
correlation-type’s. Even though taking into account of
unsatisfactory.
In this paper, a complete analysis of MUSIC time delay
estimation is provided and an improved algorithm is
proposed. The correlation-type matrix is reconstructed by
the estimated channel response, whereas the original
MUSIC’s correlation-type matrix can be considered as
gotten by matched filter. Diagonal loading least squares
(DL-LS) [10], which fits for both wideband and
narrowband signals, is suggested to estimate the channel
response. With the preprocessing, narrowband or even
continuous wave (CW) signals’ time delays can be
estimated accurately.
This paper is organised as follows. Section 2 introduces the
background, and gives the signal model. In Section 3, MUSIC
time delay estimation algorithm is reviewed, and the
performance of the MUSIC algorithm is analysed. A new
method, named as DL-LS-MUSIC, is proposed in Section
4. Simulation results and pool experiments are provided to
illustrate the performances of DL-LS-MUSIC comparing
with the conventional MUSIC algorithm. Finally, the
conclusions are summarised in Section 5.
2 Signal model
The signal model is assumed as

K
x(t) = ai s(t − ti ) + e(t), 0 , t , T (1)
i=1
where s(t) is the emitted source signal, T is the duration and
e(t) is Gaussian white noise. The received signal x(t) is

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modelled by a sum of K echoes from multiple paths, with rewritten in vector form as
different time delay ti and attenuation ai .
Without a loss of generality, N samples are observed with a 
K
sampling period Ts ¼ T/N, and the discrete form is r= ai Ai |S|2 + w = Fa + w (9)
i=1


K
x(k) = ai s(k − ti ) + e(k), k = 0, 1, . . . , N − 1 (2) where
i=1
1  
Ai = diag 1 exp (j2pti /N ) · · · exp (j2p(N − 1)ti /N )
where x(k) = x(t)|t=kTs , ti ¼ ti/Ts and the sampling error is N
ignored. Thus the cross-correlation of the two signals, x(k) (10)
and s(k), is given by  T
|S|2 = |S(0)|2 |S(1)|2 · · · |S(N − 1)|2 (11)

N −1  T
Rsx (n) = s(k − n)x∗ (k), n = 0, 1, . . . , N − 1 (3) w = w(0) w(1) . . . w(N − 1) (12)
k=0 
F = A1 |S|2 A2 |S 2 | · · · AK |S|2 (13)
where (∗ ) is complex conjugate symbol. s(k – n) and x(n) can  T
be written by inverse discrete Fourier transform (IDFT) of a = a1 a2 · · · aK (14)
their frequency form, S(m) and X(m), respectively

3 Original MUSIC
1 N
−1
s(k − n) = [S(m) exp ( − j2pmn/N )] exp (j2pmk/N )
N m=0 3.1 Multiple signal classification
(4) Time delay ti is a parameter of r. The relation between ti and
r is similar to that between direction and the received signal in
DOA estimation. The key point of MUSIC algorithm is to get

K a correlation matrix and subspace. If we want to apply
x(k) = ai s(k − ti ) + e(k) MUSIC in time delay estimation, a correlation matrix Rr
i=1 similar to spatial correlation matrix R would be needed.
  There are three usual methods to construct the matrix.
−1 
1 N K
= a [S(m)exp( − j2pmti /N )]exp(j2pmk/N )
N m=0 i=1 i 1.
+ e(k) (5)
Rr = E[rrH ] (15)
where j is imaginary unit. Rsx can computed by IDFT Under the assumption of repeat frequency, several groups
data, r1 , r2 , . . ., rM , can be obtained by multiple
Rsx = IDFT(S. · X ∗ ) (6) experiments. The correlation matrix is estimated as

where Rsx , S, and X are arranged by Rsx(m), S(m) and X(m) 1 M

respectively. For instance, S = S(0) S(1) · · · R̂r = r rH (16)
M i=1 i i
S(N − 1)]T . (. · ) denotes dot multiplication. Now
substituting (4) and (5) into (3), we obtain
However, the hypothesis may not be met in application, and
the rank of R̂r will be degraded to 1.

N −1
Rsx (n) = r(m)exp( − j2pnm/N ) (7) 2. As Rsx and r are Fourier transform pairs, |Rsx|2 can be
m=0
considered as r’s power spectrum. Therefore |Rsx|2 and r’s
correlation function are also Fourier transform pairs,
1 K
1 N−1 Rr (m) = IDFT(|Rsx (n)|2 ).
with r(m) = S(m) ai S ∗ (m)exp(j2pmti /N ) + w(m)
N i=1
N k=0 Basing on self-correlation sequence Rr(m), the correlation
matrix is constructed as [11]
1 K
= a |S(m)|2 exp(j2pmti /N ) + w(m) (8)
N i=1 i R̂r = [rij ]M ×M (17)
 −1
where w(m) = (1/N )S(m) Nk=0 exp (j2pmk/N )e∗ (k) = If i ≥ j, rij ¼ Rr(i 2 j), and otherwise rij ¼ Rr( j 2 i)∗ . It is to
∗
(1/N )S(m)(DFT[e(k)]) . It is notable that w(m) is not white. be noted that in order to get better visual resolution, the
r (m) can be considered as time delay function. The relation transmitted and received signals could be padded with zeros
between r and Rsx is similar to y and Y in frequency to the length Ns + Nx 2 1. To get a full rank condition
estimation, where y is the observed signal composed of matrix, we should have K , M , N. Usually, M is assigned
several
K signals with different frequencies, y(t) = with the largest integer not larger than N/2. For DOA
i=1 ai exp (j2pfi t), and Y is its frequency spectrum. The estimation, the resolving probability of direction will
parameter ti is equivalent to the frequency fi . r and Rsx are increase as the array aperture increases. Likewise, with an
Fourier transform pairs, and r ¼ IDFT(Rsx). r (m) is increase in M, the resolving probability of time will

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& The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2012 doi: 10.1049/iet-rsn.2012.0002
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increase. Nevertheless, computing quantity is proportional to Table 1 Common characteristics of super-resolution DOA and
M 3. Moreover, if N is constant, increasing M will lead to R̂r TDOA
unsteady, which is analogous to decreasing snapshot
DOA TDOA
number in DOA estimation.
3. Similar to the single snapshot DOA estimation, R̂r can be N sensor number sample number
constructed by forward matrix [12]. K source number echo number
signal model X ¼ sSva + n r ¼ Fa + w
⎡ ⎤
r(0) r(1) . . . r(N − M ) vector need be steering vector v(u) time vector b(t)
⎢ r(1) r(2) . . . r(N − M + 1) ⎥ scanned
⎢ ⎥
Z=⎢ .. .. .. .. ⎥ (18) correlation matrix R̂ R̂r
⎣ . . . . ⎦ spectrum spatial spectrum time delay spectrum
r(M − 1) r(M ) . . . r(N − 1) P(u) P(t)
l arg (zi ) N arg (zi )
root-MUSIC result ui = sin−1 ti =
1 2pd 2p
R̂r = ZZ H (19)
M
In Fig. 1a, the centre frequencies are both 0.2, the
When the correlation matrix is constructed, subspace Un can normalised frequency ranges are 0.05– 0.35 and 0 – 0.4.
be obtained by eigen decomposition. We have More accurate results are obtained for the latter condition

R̂r = M H
i=1 li ui U i where li and ui are eigenvalue and
because of the wider band. Fig. 1b shows that the
eigenvector respectively. Then time delay spectrum is resolution capability and estimation accuracy decreases
when the centre frequency increases. The above simulation
1 tells that lower centre frequency is helpful to improve
P(t) = (20) accuracy.
U H
n t)
b( 2


where Un ¼ [uK+1 , . . ., uM], b(t) = 1 exp (j2pt/N )
· · · exp (j2p(M − 1)t/N )]T and b(t) is similar to steering
vector. The common characteristics of super-resolution
DOA and TDOA can be seen in Table 1. For root-MUSIC,
the direction ui and time delay ti can be estimated by
solving polynomial directly without scanning spectrum, and
d is element space of uniform linear array.
3.2 Performance of original MUSIC
In this subsection, the shortcomings of original MUSIC are
illustrated by numerical simulations.
3.2.1 Simulation 1: The transmitted signal is linear
frequency modulated (LFM) signal and has duration
T ¼ 200 with normalised sampling frequency. The observed
data length is 600, composed of two echoes with TOAs 80
and 85, respectively. Signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) are both
3 dB.
3.2.2 Simulation 2: Narrower bandwidth, worse
performance and the original MUSIC fails to work on CW
signals. The transmitted signal is CW signal with frequency
being 0.2. The other simulation condition is same as
simulation 1. As in Fig. 2, MUSIC cannot estimate the
lapped CW signal’s time delay totally. The reason is
analysed in the next section.
4 Novel method
4.1. Pre-processing of MUSIC
The former simulations have shown the original MUSIC is
less effective to treat with narrowband signal. One
explanation is that the replica correlation process in the
original MUSIC algorithm is less effective to detect CW
signal than to detect LFM signal. An example with echo at
t ¼ 200 (SNR ¼ 5 dB) is illustrated. When the bandwidth

Fig. 1 Performance of MUSIC

a Same centre frequency and different bandwidth
b Same bandwidth and different centre frequency

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Fig. 2 MUSIC time delay estimation for CW Fig. 4 Rr’s eigenvalues with different bandwidths
a f1 ¼ f2 ¼ 0.2
b f1 ¼ 0.2, f2 ¼ 0.22
c f1 ¼ 0, f2 ¼ 0.2
goes larger, Rsx will concentrate on the TOA’s reversal as d f1 ¼ 0.1, f2 ¼ 0.3
shown in Fig. 3.
rsx can also be considered as r’s spectral estimation. The
peaks should be gotten at the same time in the four To solve the above problem, one should reduce the
scenarios, because t is equivalent to r’s ‘frequency’. echo-related components in the noise subspace. A
However, only the wideband scenario has wonderful pre-processing without restriction about signal type is
‘spectral estimation’ result as shown in Figs. 3c and d; the needed to re-estimate r’s ‘spectrum’. Ignoring the noise, r’s
result for narrowband signal is not so good as shown in ‘spectrum’ can be ideally written as
Figs. 3a and b. The reason is that the noise subspace will 
h(v) = Ki=1 ci d(v − ti ). Actually, h(v)is the channel
be severely contaminated by  the echoesM and cannot be response and can
K  be estimated by the least T squares (LS)
estimated accurately. Usually i=1 li / i=1 li is used to algorithm. h = h(0) h(1) · · · h(N − 1) .
evaluate how the signal subspace and the noise space are
constructed. Evidently, it is improper to use the first Kth
eigenvalues to construct time delay function’s signal space h = (sT s)−1 sT x (21)
in Figs. 4a and b. The principle is similar to MUSIC
frequency estimation. For narrowband situation, time delay where s is circle convolution kernel matrix
function, r, can be seemed as a ‘wideband signal’, and its
⎡ ⎤
spectrum, rsx , has flat spectrum. If the original MUSIC is s(0) s(N − 1) ... s(1)
still applied, it is similar to wideband signal’s frequency ⎢ .. .. ⎥
estimation by narrowband MUSIC algorithm. ⎢ s(1) s(0) . . ⎥
s=⎢
⎢
⎥
⎥ (22)
⎣ .. ..
. . . . . s(N − 1) ⎦
s(N − 1) s(N − 2) ... s(0)

However, the performance of LS is degraded severely with

sparse signal matrix. DL-LS is proposed [10] to solve the
problem, by adding a positive definite matrix D to the matrix

ĥ = (sT s + D)−1 sT x (23)

In order to make sure the diagonal matrix’s positive definite,

Fig. 3 Correlation functions with different bandwidths
a Rsx of CW signal (f1 ¼ f2 ¼ 0.2)
b Rsx of narrowband signal (f1 ¼ 0.2, f2 ¼ 0.22)
c Rsx of wideband signal (f1 ¼ 0, f2 ¼ 0.2)
d Rsx of wideband signal (f1 ¼ 0.1, f2 ¼ 0.3)
D ¼ WTW. For simplicity, W ¼ aI and I is an identity matrix
with the same dimension as s. As analysed in [10], LS time
delay estimation means an answer to an optimisation
problem: minhx – sh2; and then DL-LS means an answer
to an optimisation problem: minh(x – sh2 + Wh2),
introducing a regularisation item makes the result to satisfy
(sTx + WTW )h ¼ sTx instead of sTsh ¼ sTx. As a result,
the fixed diagonal loading increase the tolerance of s’s
sparsity in the cost of decreasing veracity. Reloading is
suggested and the diagonal elements are different. If
Wh ¼ 0, the veracity would not be harmed. In order to
simplify the function, a sub-optimal solution is proposed:
The primary estimated h’s reciprocal is introduced as
diagonal loading item. It should be noted that the absolute

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value should be calculated to keep the loading items’
positive.

 = diag(1./|(sT s + a2 I)−1 sT x|)

W = diag(1./|h|) (24)

diag() puts a vector on the main diagonal and (./) denotes

dividing by element. h  is a rough estimation and
 = (sT s + a2 I)−1 sT x. a is set as the standard deviation of
h
s’s diagonal elements.
Substitute (24) into (23), and obtain
ĥ = (sT s + W T W )−1 sT x. Loading value is no longer a
constant value. When the echoes is absent, the loading
value is larger and when the echoes is present, the loading
value is smaller. Re-loading weakens the impact of
inappropriate a to estimation and escapes from its infection.
Then R̂sx (m) is constructed as R̂sx (m) = ĥ(N − m). After
getting the new correlation-type function, R̂r can be
computed and MUSIC is applied. This algorithm enhances Fig. 6 MUSIC and DL-LS-MUSIC for FM when SNR ¼ 5 dB
the time delay function’s focus capacity at TOA for
narrowband signal and is named as DL-LS-MUSIC.
Summary of DL-LS-MUSIC:

1. Construct the circle convolution kernel matrix s.

2. Set a proper diagonal loading factor, and estimate the
primary channel response: ĥ = (sT s + a2 I)−1 sT x =
U(L2 + a2 I)−1 LU T x.
3. Re-estimate the channel response as (23) while D is
computed by (24).
4. Get correlation-type function: R̂sx (m) = ĥ(N − m), and
r ¼ IDFT(Rsx).
5. Based on the third method, Z is estimated by (18).
6. Compute the time delay spectrum and estimate time delays
by (20).

4.2 Performance of DL-LS-MUSIC

In this section, we further investigate the performance of

super-resolution by means of computer simulations.
4.2.1 Simulation 3: The transmitted signal is CW signal.
The TOAs of two echoes are 95 and 100, respectively, with
SNRs ¼ 5 dB. The other condition is the same as
Simulation 1. Even for CW signal, DL-LS-MUSIC can
estimate the time delays accurately, whereas MUSIC fails to
Fig. 7 MUSIC and DL-LS-MUSIC’s MSE of two signals for
different SNRs
distinguish the two echoes as in Fig. 5. Obviously, the
resolution capability becomes more powerful with SNR
higher from Fig. 5b.

Fig. 5 DL-LS-MUSIC for CW signal

a MUSIC and DL-LS-MUSIC for CW when SNR ¼ 5 dB
b DL-LS-MUSIC performance against SNR

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Fig. 9 MUSIC and DL-LS-MUSIC for experimental data (FM,

22.5– 27.5 KHz)
a 22.5– 27.5 KHz FM signal
b Original MUSIC
a DL-LS MUSIC

Fig. 8 Placement of the pool experiment experiment in high multipath environment was designed to
demonstrate the novel algorithm’s effectivity. The pool is
non-anechoic and the size is 7 m × 7 m × 4.75 m. Water
4.2.2 Simulation 4: More closely arriving echoes are
temperature is 10.2 8C. Isothermal sound speed profile was
considered, and time delays are 98 and 100. Other
assumed and the sound speed was estimated as 1449.4 m/s
simulation condition is same as Simulation 3 expect the
by empirical formulate. The transmitting and receiving
emitted signal is FM signal with frequency band as 0 – 0.3.
transducer were placed with depth 2.5 and 2.4 m,
When SNR ¼ 5 dB, the results of two MUSIC algorithms
respectively. The horizontal distance of the two transducers
is shown in Fig. 6, and DL-LS-MUSIC’s resolution
capability is much better than MUSIC. Furthermore, vary
the SNR of the two closely arriving echoes to observe mean
Table 3 Estimated major paths’ time delays
square error (MSE) of the estimation results. For different
SNR, 200 times Monte Carlo simulation are operated to get Actual time FM CW
MSE as in Fig. 7. Evidently, MSE of DL-LS-MUSIC is delays (0.01 ms)
smaller than MUSIC except in the scenario of low SNR. MUSIC DL-LS-MUSIC MUSIC DL-LS-MUSIC
When the SNR is 3 dB or below, the performance of
0 (D) 22.7 0.3 23.1 0.6
DL-LS-MUSIC is not good because LS’s performance is
134.4 (F) 135 136.4 134 133.1
constrained by low SNR.
144.5 (B) 140.4 141.9 null 153.2
160.3 (S) 159.2 163.3 null 158.8
4.3 Experiment 239.1 (L) null 247.6 260 243.1
461 (B –S), 501.9 500.2 null 499.6
As explained in Simulation 3, DL-LS-MUSIC shows
473 (S –B)
superiority in narrowband signal. Furthermore, a pool

Table 2 Majority paths’ time delays

Ray line type D B S B–S S–B F A L R

distance, m 4 6.10 6.33 10.68 10.86 5.95 10.40 7.47 6.68

propagation time, ms 2.76 4.21 4.36 7.37 7.50 4.10 7.18 5.15 4.61
time delay, ms 0 1.45 1.60 4.61 4.73 1.34 4.42 2.39 1.85

D: transmitter –receiver (direct path)

B: transmitter-bottom-receiver
S: transmitter-surface-receiver
B–S: transmitter-bottom–surface-receiver
S–B: transmitter-surface–bottom-receiver
F: transmitter-front pool wall-receiver
A: transmitter-behind pool wall-receiver
R: transmitter-right pool wall-receiver
L: transmitter-left pool wall-receiver

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Fig. 10 MUSIC and DL-LS-MUSIC for experimental data (CW,
25 KHz)
a 2.5 m 25 KHz CW signal
b Original MUSIC
a DL-LS MUSIC
is 4 m. The transmitting transducer was 1.7 and 2.2 m away
from the left and front walls. The experiment was set as Fig. 8.
Ignoring the propagation paths with two or more
reflections, the distance and propagation times are
calculated by ray model as Table 2.
Appropriate pulse signals, including wideband LFM and
CW, were created by the virtual instrument of National
Instruments. After amplified, the signal was transmitted by
the transducer with period as 100 ms. The receiving signal
was filtered to escaping from the 50 Hz of alternating
current. The sampling frequency was 1 MHz. Time delays
are estimated by the original MUSIC and DL-LS-MUSIC
and compared with the actual ones in Table 3.
Shown in Fig. 9, the original MUSIC and DL-LS-MUSIC
both estimate the time delays of major paths of FM signal.
The error of L path’s time delay is relatively large because
the distance between the left pool wall and transmitter is
not exactly measured. For CW signal, DL-LS-MUSIC still
obtains accurate results in Fig. 10, similar to that for FM
signal, while the original MUSIC is disabled.
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5 Conclusions
In this paper, the super-resolution time delay estimation has
been studied and the disadvantage for narrowband signal is
indicated. In order to improve the resolution capability for
narrowband signal, DL-LS-MUSIC is proposed. It needs a
pre-processing that reconstructs the correlation function to
focus at the TOA more wonderfully. The algorithm can
estimate the time delay of narrowband signal and even the
CW signal. Simulation and pool experiment results
demonstrate that the proposed algorithm’s performance
compared is superior to original MUSIC.
6 Acknowledgment
This work was supported by the Natural Science Foundation
of China under grant 11074270.
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