Patent ID: 7289388

Claim:
A system for estimating the instantaneous signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) in an environment, comprising: a transmitter configured to transmit at least one first signal through a predetermined transmission medium within the environment, the first signal having a predetermined frequency range, wherein the first signal travels tbrough the transmission medium until it strikes at least one object, thereby generating at least one second signal reflected from the object; a plurality of band-pass filters, each band-pass filter being configured to pass a respective sub-band of frequencies, each band-pass filter being further configured to receive representations of the first and second signals, to filter the representations of the first and second signals, and to provide filtered versions of the first and second signals; a cross correlator configured to receive the filtered versions of the first and second signals provided by the respective band-pass filters, and to perform multiple cross correlation operations on the filtered first and second signals, thereby providing cross correlation output data, wherein each cross correlation operation operates on the filtered first and second signals provided by a respective one of the band-pass filters; and a data analyzer contiqured to receive the cross correlation output data, and to analyze the output data for determining variability of cross correlation peaks within each frequency sub-band, for identifying the lowest frequency sub-band having a corresponding low peak ambiguity, and for estimating the SNR in the environment based on the peak variability and center frequency of the identified frequency sub-band and the predetermined frequency range.