Patent ID: 7436909

Claim:
A method for estimating a time of arrival (TOA) of an ultra wide band (UWB) signal received in a wireless communication system, comprising: measuring an energy in a frame of the UWB received signal to determine a block in the frame, the block representing a coarse time of arrival of the UWB received signal; and combining a plurality of time-delayed versions of a template signal with the block of the UWB received signal to select a particular template signal, the particular template signal identifying a particular chip representing a fine time of arrival of the UWB received signal, and in which the template signal is a transmitted signal corresponding to the UWB received signal, in which the fine TOA of the UWB received signal, τ TOA , is represented by is τ TOA =kT c =k b T b +k c T c , and where kε[0, N c −1] is the TOA in terms of the pulse duration T c , N c is the number of chips per frame interval, T b is the block interval including B pulses (T b =BT c ), and k b ε[0, N c B−1], and k c ε[0,B−1] are integers that determine, respectively, in which block and pulse the UWB signal is received via a first signal path.