IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VEHICULAR TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 57, NO.
4, JULY 2008
Ranging in Multiband Ultrawideband
Communication Systems
Ebrahim Saberinia, Member, IEEE, and Ahmed H. Tewfik, Fellow, IEEE
Abstract—In this paper, we consider the problem of providing
highly accurate time-delay or ranging estimates using multiple re-
ceptions of ranging signals in multiband communication systems.
Specifically, we propose an algorithm to enhance the resolution
of range and time-delay estimation in a multiband orthogonal
frequency-division multiplexing system that has been proposed
for the IEEE 802.15.3a wireless personal area networks. While
this paper does not specifically address the problem of accurate
localization in multipath nonline-of-sight environments, the pro-
posed approach enhances the resolution and can be combined with
any of the known techniques designed for such environments to
provide an enhanced localization performance. Prior research has
shown that the variance of the time-delay estimation error in white
Gaussian noise is inversely proportional to the energy of probe
signal and the square of its mean square bandwidth. In a multi-
band system with M subbands, traditional ranging techniques
reduce the variance of the delay estimation from a single subband
signal by a factor of M by properly combining M probing signals
from all subbands. In contrast, we describe a new approach that
synthesizes the return corresponding to a virtual large-bandwidth
signal by appropriately merging the returns of M low-bandwidth
ranging signals at the receiver. We show that using this technique,
the variance of the delay estimation is reduced by a factor of M 3 .
We also show that the proposed scheme achieves the Cramer–Rao
lower bound under the high signal-to-noise ratio condition.
Index Terms—Cramer–Rao lower bound (CRLB), multiband
systems, ranging, ultrawideband (UWB) communications.
I. I NTRODUCTION
R ANGING and location awareness is a desirable feature
in wireless networks, with applications such as asset
tagging and tracking, finding people, safety, emergency (E911),
and robotics [1]. This feature is emphasized in the emerging
IEEE 802.15.3a and new IEEE 802.15.4a wireless personal
area networks. Using ultrawideband (UWB) communications
in the physical layer of these systems provides the opportunity
for very precise ranging due to high time resolution of UWB
signals. One of the leading proposals for the IEEE 802.15.3a
Standard is a multiband system that is named multiband or-
thogonal frequency-division multiplexing (MB-OFDM) [2]. In
Manuscript received November 1, 2005; revised July 2, 2006 and
September 7, 2006. The review of this paper was coordinated by Prof.
X.-G. Xia.
E. Saberinia is with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineer-
ing, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, NV 89154 USA (e-mail: ebrahim@
egr.unlv.edu).
A. H. Tewfik is with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engi-
neering, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455 USA (e-mail:
tewfik@umn.edu).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TVT.2007.904526
0018-9545/$25.00 © 2008 IEEE
2523
multiband systems, the whole available bandwidth is divided
into several subbands, and in each time interval, a signal is
transmitted over only one of the subbands. Of particular interest
to us in this paper is enhancing the range and time-delay esti-
mation resolution in multiband communication systems using
multiple receptions from the different subbands.
Range estimation has received considerable attention in radar
and sonar applications (see, for example, [3], [4], and references
therein). Usually, ranging is performed by estimating the time
of arrival of a known signal with a narrow autocorrelation
function. If there is a strong direct path between the transmitter
and receiver, the accuracy of the range estimation only depends
on the energy of the ranging signal and the resolution of its
autocorrelation function. On the other hand, in the presence
of multipath nonline-of-sight (NLOS) environments, ranging
is more complicated. The radio propagation channel that is
encountered in wireless communications is characterized by
variability across sites and severe multipath. Furthermore, the
direct line-of-sight (LOS) signal propagation path between the
transmitter and receiver may be missing in several returns.
Both multipath fading and the absence of the LOS compo-
nent lead to large localization errors in wireless networks. For
example, in some returns, the NLOS component may have a
larger amplitude than the LOS component. A system that locks
on the dominant return can therefore produce a wrong range
estimate. In other cases, the strength of the LOS component
may be below the minimum detection threshold. The receiver
would then miss the shortest path between the transmitter and
receiver and again produce an incorrect range estimate. Several
techniques have been proposed to deal with these challenges,
including [6]–[11]. However, the accuracy of all these tech-
niques also depends directly on the resolution of the ranging
signal. Note that we do not provide in this paper any new
algorithm for multipath or NLOS problems. The approach that
is described in this paper is to enhance the resolution of a
single path. However, it can be combined with any of the tech-
niques that were described in the aforementioned references to
provide an enhanced localization performance in a multipath
environment.
It is well known that the time resolution, and therefore the
range estimation, in any system is inversely proportional to its
bandwidth. Hence, the system bandwidth puts a limit on the
accuracy of the delay estimation. This limit can be quantified
using bounds on the variance of the estimation error, such as
the Cramer–Rao lower bound (CRLB) [3]. The CRLB shows
that the time-delay error variance is inversely proportional to
the duration of a finite power probing signal and the square of
its bandwidth. In multiband communication systems wherein
2524
the whole bandwidth is divided into several subbands, in each
time interval, only a single subband can be used to transmit
a signal with the bandwidth of a subband. This would appear
to decrease the achievable time resolution by multiband sys-
tems. The current ranging scheme in the MB-OFDM system
estimates the range from the individual subbands and takes an
average of the estimates to reduce the effect of noise.
In this paper, we propose a new scheme to process ranging
signals that are received from the different subbands of a
multiband system that provides higher time delay and range
resolution. We first use the well-known CRLB on the variance
of the time-delay estimation to derive the CRLB for the multi-
band systems. We also derive an expression for the variance
of the time-delay estimate of the averaging scheme and show
that it is much worse than what the CRLB indicates. We then
describe a new scheme where the receiver estimates range by
processing all the received signals from the different subbands.
It efficiently implements a maximum-likelihood (ML) estima-
tor and provides a delay estimate that asymptotically achieves
the CRLB in the high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) regime. In
this scheme, the received signal in each subband is sampled
at the Nyquist rate. Then, all signals are combined using a
perfect reconstruction full-tree wavelet synthesis filter bank.
We present a structure of a uniform discrete Fourier transform
(DFT) synthesis filter bank, as described in [5], as an example
of such a combining filter bank. The combined signal is then
correlated with a template signal to estimate the time delay. We
also show how to design proper signals to be transmitted in the
different subbands to achieve the best performance. The effects
of multipath and fading on the performance of the proposed
scheme are studied. Finally, simulation results are provided
to compare the performance of the system with that of the
traditional schemes.
A related problem has been studied in the late 1980s for esti-
mating the location of closely spaced wideband signal sources
[12]–[16]. In that problem, the sources transmit wideband
signals with an unknown spectrum. The receiver divides the
whole bandwidth into several small narrow-band sections and
processes each segment separately. One coherent combining
method estimates the cross-spectral density matrices of indi-
vidual segments and combines them to generate a focused
matrix that is processed to estimate the different parameters
of the wideband signal [12], [13]. The other coherent combin-
ing scheme estimates the spatiotemporal correlation matrices
and combines them to generate the correlation matrix for the
wideband signal [14], [15]. In [16], a noncoherent scheme is
presented that first estimates the time delay from each segment
and then combines them using a linear combiner to produce
the final estimate. The scheme that is presented in this paper is
also a coherent combining scheme that directly combines the
samples of each segment and estimates the time delay from
the combined signal. However, the problem in the multiband
system is different than that of dealing with closely spaced
wideband sources. In the latter case, the transmitted signal is
a wideband signal, and the receiver processes it segment by
segment in parallel. In a multiband communication system,
on the other hand, the transmitter transmits a signal with the
bandwidth of a single subband at any given time. The second
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VEHICULAR TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 57, NO. 4, JULY 2008
Fig. 1. Baseline ranging scheme for the MB-OFDM system using TWTT.
difference is the fact that in the schemes proposed in [12]–
[16], it is assumed that the width of each segment is very
small, so that the channel frequency response is constant for
each segment. In multiband UWB systems, the bandwidth of
a single subband is larger than 500 MHz, and the signal that is
transmitted in a single subband is subject to frequency-selective
fading. Finally, unlike the approaches of [12]–[16], the signals
in the different subbands are sampled at the Nyquist rate in our
proposed scheme and then combined with a full-tree perfect
reconstruction wavelet synthesis filter bank to generate a signal
with a larger bandwidth. The time delay is estimated from the
combined signal using a correlator.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. The cur-
rent ranging scheme in an MB-OFDM system is reviewed in
Section II. In Section III, we derive the CRLB for the time-
delay estimates in a multiband system and an upper bound on
the performance of the averaging scheme using well-known
CRLB bounds for range estimation. Section IV describes the
new ranging scheme for multiband systems. Simulation re-
sults are provided in Section VI. We conclude this paper in
Section VII.
II. R ANGING IN THE MB-OFDM S YSTEM
As in other ranging schemes, the current ranging scheme
in the MB-OFDM system estimates the distance or range be-
tween two devices by estimating the propagation delay between
devices and multiplying it by the speed of light. To estimate
the propagation delay, a technique known as two-way time
transfer (TWTT) is used. The TWTT method was originally
proposed to permit precise synchronization and range estima-
tion between satellites and ground stations [17]. Fig. 1 shows
how TWTT operates in the MB-OFDM system. Device A
transmits Message M at a recorded time TA , which is re-
ceived at Device B and recorded there as having arrived at
time TB = TA + to + tp . Here, tp is the unknown propagation
delay, and to is the unknown offset between the two clocks
counterreadings. Similarly, Device B transmits Message M

that is recorded at time TB
, which is received at Device A and
recorded there as having arrived at time TA
= TB
− to + tp .
From these two equations in two unknowns, it is possible to
solve for tp , yielding
tp = 1/2 [(TA
− TA ) − (TB
− TB )] . (1)
SABERINIA AND TEWFIK: RANGING IN MULTIBAND UWB COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS
Similarly, to may be computed as
to = 1/2 [(TB − TA ) − (TB
− TA
)] . (2)
The range between the two devices can be estimated as R =
c tp , where c is the speed of light. Successive measurements
of to allow the ranging measurement process to correct for
frequency offsets between the clocks in the two devices. The
technique uses preamble acquisition sequences and synchro-
nization circuits that already exist in the MB-OFDM system.
The accuracy of range estimation in this system depends on
the accuracy of the estimates of the time delays TA and TB . In
Section III, we derive an upper bound on the accuracy of this
scheme.
III. CRLB ON THE A CCURACY OF THE T IME -D ELAY
E STIMATION IN M ULTIBAND S YSTEMS
Consider the following simple model for the time-delay
estimation problem, where the received signal is given by
r(t) = s(t − τ ) + n(t). (3)
Here, s(t) is a known signal, and τ is an unknown delay to be
estimated. Additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) is presented
with n(t). The CRLB on the variance of the estimated time
delay is given by [3]


var(τ̂ ) ≥ 1/ (Es /2N0 ) · w2 . (4)
In this equation, Es is the energy of s(t), and AWGN, i.e.,
n(t), has a density of N0 /2. The variable w is the mean square
bandwidth of s(t) and is defined as [3]
 2
ω |S(ω)|2 dω
w2 =  (5)
|S(ω)|2 dω
where S(ω) is the Fourier transform of s(t).
For a multiband system with M subbands, the CRLB can
be calculated using the aforementioned result. Suppose that
we transmit a signal with energy Es in each subband. At
the receiver, we consider all the received signals as a single
signal that is transmitted over an interval equal to M times the
interval that is dedicated to a single subband. This signal has
a bandwidth of (M w) and an energy of (M Es ). Therefore, the
CRLB on the variance of the time-delay estimate for M ranging
signals in M subbands is equal to
 
var(τ̂M -subband ) ≥ 1/ ((M Es )/2N0 )2 · (M w)2


= 1/ (Es /2N0 ) · w2 · M 3 . (6)
The CRLB of (4) and therefore (6) are asymptotically achiev-
able by the ML estimator at high SNRs. The ML estimate of
a delay is computed by correlating the delayed signal with a
copy of the original signal and declaring the time at which the
maximum correlation occurs as the estimate of the delay [3]. In
low or middle SNR regimes, other bounds are tighter [18].
An ML estimator of the delay τ in a multiband system
requires that the receiver should process the total bandwidth of
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the system at the same time. However, in multiband systems,
only the bandwidth of a single subband is processed at any
time interval at the receiver. Therefore, we need a method to
determine the delay by processing each subband separately.
One traditional way in estimating the range from the different
subbands is the averaging scheme, which is currently used in
the MB-OFDM system [2]. In this scheme, the time delay is
estimated individually from each signal that is received in each
subband, and then, their average is calculated to decrease the
effect of noise.
A lower bound on the variance of the estimate in the av-
eraging scheme can be calculated by noticing that for each
estimate before averaging, the CRLB is given by (4). If inde-
pendent noise components are assumed for each subband, the
lower bound on the variance of the estimation error can be
written as


var(τ̂ave ) = var(τ̂subband )/M ≥ 1/ (Es /2N0 )2 · w2 · M
(7)
where Es is the energy of the signal that is transmitted in each
subband. Performance is therefore very poor when compared
with the CRLB in (6). While the CRLB shows that the variance
of the time-delay estimation could be reduced by a factor of
M 3 as the number of subbands increases, the averaging scheme
provides a decrease by a factor of M .
In Section IV, we describe a new scheme that efficiently
implements the ML delay estimator in multiband systems and
asymptotically achieves the CRLB in the high SNR regime.
IV. D ELAY E STIMATION W ITH F ILTER -B ANK C OMBINING
In this section, we describe a new scheme to process the
received signals from the different subbands of a multiband
system. The scheme efficiently implements the ML estimator
while taking into account the limitation of the receiver in
processing a single subband bandwidth at a time. Furthermore,
the analog-to-digital converter in the proposed scheme operates
at the Nyquist rate corresponding to the bandwidth of a single
subband.
To explain the concept behind our approach, we start with
a traditional ranging pseudorandom (PN) sequence c(n) with
an equivalent bandwidth of M w in a pure-delay channel. For
simplicity of exposition, assume that the signal passes through
a channel with delay equal to τ = n0 /(M w). The digital equiv-
alent of this system is presented in Fig. 2(a). Now, suppose that
we decompose c(n) into M signals ck (n), k = 0, . . . , M − 1,
each with a bandwidth of w, using a perfect reconstruction full-
tree wavelet decomposition filter bank and follow the decom-
position by the corresponding synthesis filter bank, as shown
in Fig. 2(b). Obviously, the overall system remains unchanged;
that is, the systems in Fig. 2(a) and (b) are equivalent. Notice
that each of the subsignals ck (n) has an equivalent bandwidth
equal to w and can be transmitted as a ranging signal in a
subband with a bandwidth of w in one of the available time
slots.
Now, suppose that we want to move the synthesis filter bank
to the receiver side, i.e., after the channel. An equivalent system
is shown in Fig. 2(c). Note that we have used the system
2526
Fig. 2. Three equivalent systems to model a simple delay estimation setup.
G(jω) = e−jωn0 /M in Fig. 2(c) to denote the transfer function
of a fractional delay channel. This equation provides the exact
frequency response of the channel over the band |ω| < π. The
exact frequency response for all ω is equal to

+∞
G(jω) = e−j(ω+2πk)n0 /M ∞ < ω < +∞.
k=−∞
Several remarks are in order here. First, the pure-delay chan-
nels G(jω) = e−jωn0 /M are not realizable using simple shift
registers and cannot be accurately estimated using the output of
any single branch unless we use a very long observation time, as
discussed previously in this paper. However, they do provide an
exact discrete-time model of the continuous time-delay channel
with delay τ at the sampling rate w [19, p. 100]. In other words,
the discrete-time equivalent model corresponding to a signal of
bandwidth w going through a channel with a pure delay τ =
n0 /(M w) is G(jω) = e−jωn0 /M . Second, the phase of G(ω)
has a discontinuity at frequencies (2m + 1) π for all integer m.
Hence, the noble identities do not hold in this case [5, p. 119],
and we need to incorporate the phase correction factors that are
shown in Fig. 2(c) at the output of each synthesis filter to ensure
the exact equivalence of the systems that are shown in Fig. 2(b)
and (c). As we will explain later in this paper, these phase
corrections are automatically performed by the modulation and
demodulation processes in a multiband system when the signals
ck (n) are transmitted in adjacent frequency subbands of equal
bandwidth.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VEHICULAR TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 57, NO. 4, JULY 2008
Assuming that the channel remains constant during the
transmission time of the M signals ck (n), Fig. 2(c) therefore
indicates that we can actually transmit the signals ck (n) in
different time slots, collect the receptions corresponding to
each signal, bring each to baseband, upsample each reception,
pass it through the appropriate reconstruction filter, correct the
(8) phase, and combine all the filter bank outputs to synthesize the
reception due to the virtual signal c(n).
A. Application to Multiband Systems
Consider now a multiband system with M subbands, each
with a bandwidth of w. If the sequence ck (n) is passed through
a digital-to-analog converter (DAC) and transmitted in the kth
subband, the transmitted signal is equal to ck (t)ej2π(fc +kw)t ,
where fc is the general carrier frequency. Assume that the signal
goes through a pure-delay channel of τ = n0 /(M w). After
down conversion, match filtering, and sampling with rate w,
we obtain a signal equal to rk (n)e−j2πfc τ e−j2πkn0 /M . Note
that the phase of the received signal consists of two terms.
The first term is due to the carrier frequency and is common
to all signals. The second factor is due to the subband center
frequency and automatically compensates for the phase discon-
tinuity that was described in the previous section. Hence, we
can put the received signal in the multiband system through a
reconstruction filter bank without phase correction. The output
is equal to c(n − n0 )e−j2πfc τ , and the delay can be estimated
by examining the absolute value of the correlation of this signal
and c(n). Note that in this scheme, we only process a bandwidth
SABERINIA AND TEWFIK: RANGING IN MULTIBAND UWB COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS
Fig. 3. Block diagram representing the path of a subsignal that is transmitted in the ith time slot.
Fig. 4. Implementation of the combining filter bank for the new ranging
scheme.
of w in a given time slot as is required by the multiband system
receiver structure.
A simplified block diagram of the system is presented in
Fig. 3. The filter hk (t) is the impulse response of the low-
pass equivalent channel for the kth subband, and Φt (t) and
Φr (t) are the filter impulse responses of the transmitter and
receiver, respectively. The relationship of this channel with the
simple digital pure-delay model in the previous section can
easily be derived. Let the filters Gk (z) represent the digital
equivalent channel for each transmission. These filters capture
the effects of the transmitter pulse-shaping filter, the actual
channel, and the receiver front-end filters. If we assume that the
communication system uses Nyquist pulses at the DAC or the
channel is perfectly equalized, then the channel can be modeled
as a pure delay. In this case, Gi (z) includes the equalization
filter as well. The effects of fading and multipath are described
in the next section.
B. Low-Complexity Implementation
Although any perfect reconstruction wavelet analysis and
synthesis filter banks can be used in the proposed scheme, we
elected to use the DFT filter banks that were described in [5]
because of their low-complexity implementation (cf. Fig. 4). In
Fig. 4, the inputs pass through a DFT, followed by the finite-
impulse response (FIR) filters Ek (jω) and a parallel-to-serial
conversion circuit. It can be easily verified that the structure is
equivalent to the combining filter bank in Fig. 2, with

M −1
F0 (z) = Ek (z M )z −(M −1−k)
k=0
 
Fk (z) =F0 ze−j2πk/M , k = 1, . . . , M − 1.
To design the filters Ek (jω), we first design an FIR low-
pass filter F0 (jω) with a cutoff frequency of 2π/M and use its
type-II polyphase decomposition as in (9). For example, in our
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Fig. 5. Filters that are designed for the reconstruction filter bank of a three-
band system that uses three 8-tap FIR filters derived from type-II polyphase
decomposition of a 24-tap low-pass FIR filter.
simulation of a three-band reconstruction filter bank, we have
chosen a 24-tap FIR low-pass filter for F0 (z) as
F0 (z) = − 0.0011 − 0.0030z −1 − 0.0025z −2
+ 0.0042z −3 + 0.0140z −4 + 0.0110z −5
− 0.0166z −6 − 0.0492z −7 − 0.0367z −8
+ 0.0573z −9 + 0.2047z −10 + 0.3179z −11
+ 0.3179z −12 + 0.2047z −13 + 0.0573z −14
− 0.0367z −15 − 0.0492z −16 − 0.0166z −17
+ 0.0110z −18 + 0.0140z −19 + 0.0042z −20
− 0.0025z −21 − 0.0030z −22 − 0.0011z −23 .
(10)
Therefore, the filter bank has been implemented with a three-
point DFT followed by three 8-tap FIR filters, i.e.,
E0 (z) = − 0.0025 + 0.0110z −1 − 0.0166z −2 + 0.3179z −3
+ 0.0573z −4 − 0.0166z −5 + 0.0042z −6 − 0.0011z −7
E1 (z) = − 0.0030 + 0.0140z −1 − 0.0492z −2 + 0.2047z −3
+ 0.2047z −4 − 0.0492z − + 0.0140z −6 − 0.0030z −7
E2 (z) = − 0.0011 + 0.0042z −1 − 0.0166z −2 + 0.0573z −3
(9) + 0.3179z −4 −0.0367z −5 + 0.0110z −6 − 0.0025z −7 .
(11)
Fig. 5 shows the frequency response of the achieved
F0 (jω), F1 (jω), F2 (jω) filters.
2528
C. Transmitter Signal Design
The discussion in the previous sections suggests that we can
design the M proper ranging signals using a high-resolution
large-bandwidth PN sequence and putting it through a uniform
DFT analysis filter bank, as shown in Fig. 2. In some communi-
cation systems, there is no specific packet for range estimation,
and it is desirable that the receiver reuses the high-resolution
signal that is transmitted for timing and synchronization to
estimate range. One example is the MB-OFDM system that was
described in Section I, where the ranging scheme uses the high
time-resolution signals that are transmitted in the preamble for
timing and synchronization [2]. The enhanced scheme that we
presented in the previous section can use multiple receptions
of these signals for range estimation as well. The output of the
reconstruction filter bank in this case is the delayed version of
a template signal. This template signal is itself the output of the
same reconstruction filter bank when its inputs are the original
transmitted preamble signals. We can correlate the combined
signal at the receiver with this template to estimate the delay.
In this case, the performance of the scheme depends on the
autocorrelation properties of the template signal.
D. Time Resolution of the MB-OFDM System
In the MB-OFDM system, the total bandwidth of 1.584 GHz
is divided into three subbands, each with a bandwidth of
528 MHz. If a single band is used for ranging, the time
resolution will be equal to 1/528 MHz = 1.9 ns. To average
the estimates from the three subbands, divide
√ the variance of
error by 3 and provide a resolution of 1.9/ 3 = 1.1 ns. Using
the approach described here and combining the subband signals
before estimating the time delay, we can achieve a resolution of
1.9/3 = 0.63 ns.
V. F ADING AND M ULTIPATH
We now qualitatively discuss the effect of more realistic
channel models on the performance of the proposed approach.
A. Flat Fading Channel
Let us begin by considering a flat fading channel. In this case,
the digital equivalent channels can be modeled as
Gk (jω) = αk e−jωn0 /M , |ω| < π (12)
where αk is the channel gain, which is modeled as a random
variable with Rayleigh, Rice, or Nakagami-m distribution [20],
and e−jωn0 /M again models a single delay of τ = n0 /M w.
If M signals are transmitted in M subbands through this
channel and the corresponding received signals are combined
with the reconstruction filter bank that was proposed in the
previous section, the combined signal will be equal to the
delayed version of a template signal with a bandwidth of
(M w). However, in this case, the template is not the fixed
signal c(n). It is equal to a signal that is obtained by using
the signals yk (n) = αk ck (n), k = 0, . . . , M − 1, as inputs to
the combining filter bank. If the communication system has a
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VEHICULAR TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 57, NO. 4, JULY 2008
good estimate of the channel coefficients, the template signal
can be regenerated at the receiver and used for correlation with
the combined signal. Otherwise, we can use c(n) and expect a
degradation in performance. Fortunately, the simulation results
that will be presented later in this paper demonstrate that the
resulting performance degradation is actually negligible.
B. Multipath Fading Channels
The situation becomes more complicated if there is a mul-
tipath effect. In that case, the sampled signal from the kth
subband is equal to

L−1
yk (n) = αkl rk (n; τl ) (13)
l=0
where rk (n; τl ) is the received signal corresponding to the
transmitted signal ck (n) delayed by a pure delay τl , and αkl
is the gain of the lth path during the kth transmission. Since the
scheme that is presented here resolves different paths that are
separated by 1/(M w) or more, we can model the delays as
τl = nl /(M w). (14)
As in the previous case, the communication system can
calculate the correct template signal to be used in the correlation
step if it has a good estimate of the channel. Otherwise, it can
use c(n) and suffer from a loss in accuracy. Please note that this
algorithm does not provide a complete ranging solution for the
NLOS situation. The proposed technique should be combined
with the approaches that are specifically designed to deal with
multipath and NLOS, such as those referenced in Section I.
Providing a higher resolution, this technique will enhance the
performance of those schemes.
VI. S IMULATION R ESULTS
In this section, we provide simulation results to show the
enhancement that was achieved by the proposed scheme. In
these simulations, we employed the PN sequence that is used as
the preamble for timing and synchronization in the MB-OFDM
system [2].
Fig. 6 shows the simulation results for a multiband system in
a pure-delay channel model. The number of subbands is chosen
to be M = 3. In this figure, we plotted the variance of the nor-
malized delay error corresponding to a pure-delay nonfading
channel versus SNR. The normalized delay error is defined as
(τ̂ − τ )/τ , where τ is the actual delay and τ̂ is the estimated
delay. The SNR is defined as the energy of the signal that is
received in one subband Es divided by the AWGN density
N0 . The structure of Fig. 4 is used to combine the receptions
with the 8-tap FIR filters of (11). This figure shows that in the
middle and high SNR regimes, the new scheme outperforms
the averaging method, as expected from the discussion in
Section III. However, in the low SNR regime, simulation results
show that the averaging scheme has a better performance. This
phenomenon can be explained by noticing the fact that there
are two sources of error in the estimation of the peak of the
SABERINIA AND TEWFIK: RANGING IN MULTIBAND UWB COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS
Fig. 6. Variance of the normalized error versus SNR in a pure-delay channel
for both averaging and combining schemes for a multiband system with M = 3
subbands.
Fig. 7. Variance of the normalized error versus number of subbands in a pure-
delay channel for both averaging and combining schemes in SNR = 9 dB.
autocorrelation function in the presence of noise. The first type
of error, which can be called the local error, is when the detected
peak is in the correct lobe and only deviated from the middle of
the lobe because of noise. The second type of error is when
noise is high enough that the peak is located in the side lobes,
causing big errors. By comparing two averaging and combining
scheme autocorrelation functions, the combining scheme has a
narrower main lobe (higher resolution). Therefore, in the high
SNR regime, where the main source of error is of type 1, the
combining scheme is better, as expected. In the very low SNR
regime, however, the main source of error is of second type, and
the averaging scheme performs better. Please also note that the
CRLB is only achievable by the ML estimator at a high SNR.
The performance of the proposed scheme increases very fast
with an increasing number of transmissions. Fig. 7 shows how
the variance of the normalized delay estimation error changes
with the number of transmissions for the averaging method and
the combining method that were described in this paper. The
SNR is fixed to be 9 dB. The variance of the time-delay estimate
in the averaging method decreases as 1/M , whereas that of the
time delay of the combining method decreases as 1/M 3 . This
validates the CRLBs that were given in (6) and (7).
2529
Fig. 8. Variance of the normalized error versus SNR in a flat fading channel
for both averaging and combining schemes for a multiband system with M = 3
subbands.
Finally, Fig. 8 shows the simulation results for a flat fading
channel. In this figure, we plotted the variance of the normal-
ized delay error versus SNR for both the averaging and combin-
ing schemes (without phase correction) for M = 3 signals. The
gains of the different transmission paths were assumed to be
independent identically distributed Rayleigh random variables.
The template that is used for correlating the combined signal is
the fixed template that is generated from ck (n), and we did not
use information about the fading channel. Simulations with the
exact template that is obtained by combining αk ck (n) did not
show any observable improvement.
VII. C ONCLUSION
In this paper, we proposed a new scheme for the time-delay
estimation in multiband communication systems that provide a
better time resolution than the traditional schemes by properly
processing the received signals from the different subbands. In
particular, our ranging approach combines the received signals
and synthesizes the return corresponding to a virtual larger
bandwidth signal. We have shown that using this technique, the
variance of the delay estimation from several subbands is pro-
portional to the cube of the number of subbands, as indicated by
the CRLB. We have also shown that this scheme asymptotically
achieves the CRLB in high SNRs. This enhanced resolution can
be combined with the algorithms dealing with multipath and
NLOS situations to improve the delay and range estimation in
wireless multiband systems.
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Ebrahim Saberinia (S’02–M’05) received the B.Sc.
and M.Sc. degrees in electrical engineering from
Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran, in
1996 and 1998, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree
in electrical and computer engineering from the Uni-
versity of Minnesota, Minneapolis, in 2004.
He is currently an Assistant Professor with the
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering,
University of Nevada, Las Vegas, NV. His research
interests include wireless communications, statistical
signal processing, and wireless networks. His current
research activities include ultrawideband communications, biomedical signal
processing, and wireless personal area networks.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VEHICULAR TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 57, NO. 4, JULY 2008
Ahmed H. Tewfik (S’81–M’82–SM’92–F’96) re-
ceived the B.Sc. degree from Cairo University,
Cairo, Egypt, in 1982 and the M.Sc., E.E., and
Sc.D. degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, Cambridge, in 1984, 1985, and 1987,
respectively.
He was with Alphatech, Inc., Burlington, MA,
in 1987. He is the E. F. Johnson Professor of
Electronic Communications with the Department
of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University
of Minnesota. He served as a Consultant to
several companies, including MTS Systems, Inc. (Eden Prairie, MN),
Emerson-Rosemount, Inc. (Eden Prairie, MN), CyberNova (Milipitas, CA),
Macrovision (Santa Clara, CA), Visionaire Technology (Fremont, CA), Ipsos
(New York, NY), InterDigital Communications (King of Prussia, PA), and Key-
eye Communications (Sacramento, CA). He was also with Texas Instruments
and Computing Devices International. From August 1997 to August 2001,
he was the President and CEO of Cognicity, Inc., which is an entertainment
marketing software tool publisher that he cofounded when he was on partial
leave of absence from the University of Minnesota. He is currently an Associate
Editor of the EURASIP Journal on Bioinformatics and Systems Biology. His
current research interests are in genomics and proteomics, programmable
wireless networks, wearable sensors for patients with traumatic brain injury,
brain computing interfaces, healthcare safety and datanomic, and pervasive
computing and storage.
Prof. Tewfik was a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Signal Processing
Society in 1997–1999. He was elected to the Board of Governors of the
IEEE Signal Processing Society in 2005. He was invited to be a Principal
Lecturer at the 1995 IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society
Summer School. He delivered plenary lectures at several IEEE and non-IEEE
meetings, including the 1994 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics,
Speech, and Signal Processing, the 1999 IEEE–EURASIP Workshop on Non-
linear Signal and Image Processing, the 1999 IEEE Turkish Signal Processing
Conference, the First IEEE International Symposium on Signal Processing and
Information Technology (2001), the SSGRR2002w International Conference
on Advances in Infrastructure for Electronic Business, Science, and Education
on the Internet, the 2003 European Union COST meeting, the Tenth IEEE
International Conference on Electronics, Circuits and Systems, and the 2005
International Workshop on Sampling Theory and Applications. He gave invited
tutorials on ultrawideband communications at the 2003 Fall IEEE Vehicular
Technology Conference, on watermarking at the 1998 IEEE International
Conference on Image Processing, and on wavelets at the 1994 IEEE Workshop
on Time–Frequency and Time-Scale Analysis. He was selected to be the
first Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE SIGNAL PROCESSING LETTERS from 1993
to 1999. He is a past Associate Editor of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON
SIGNAL PROCESSING, was a Guest Editor of three special issues on wavelets
and their applications and watermarking of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON
SIGNAL PROCESSING, and was a Guest Editor of a special issue on multimedia
databases of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MULTIMEDIA. He also served as the
President of the Minnesota Chapters of the IEEE Signal Processing Society and
the IEEE Communications Society from 2002 to 2005. He was the recipient of
the E. F. Johnson Professorship of Electronic Communications Award in 1993,
a Taylor Faculty Development Award from the Taylor Foundation in 1992, a
National Science Foundation Research Initiation Award in 1990, and the IEEE
Third Millennium Award in 2000.