Patent ID: 8320552

Claim:
A method for estimating a delay of a signal between a reference point and a reception point, the method comprising the steps of: defining at least one quantity of said signal; for each quantity, performing the steps of: evaluating the quantity at the reference point and at the reception point at a plurality of time instants, thereby yielding reference-point values and reception-point values, respectively; quantizing the reference-point values by comparing each of said reference-point values with a first time-invariant threshold and quantizing the reception-point values by comparing each of said reception-point values with a second time-invariant threshold, thereby yielding quantized reference-point values and quantized reception-point values, respectively; assigning a penalty to each of all possible pairs of quantized values based on an expected probability of simultaneous occurrence of the values of said pair when the delay is correctly estimated; computing a weighted penalty for each candidate delay from a set of candidate delays, each weighted penalty being an average penalty computed for the candidate delay with a weighting term assigned based on the particular quantity; and electing an estimated delay from the set of candidate delays based on the computed weighted penalties.