Maximum likelihood and signal-selective TDOA estimation for noncircular signals

This paper addresses the issue of time-difference-of-arrival (TDOA) estimation for complex noncircular signals. First, under the wide-sense stationary assumption, we derive the maximum likelihood (ML) estimator and the Cramer-Rao lower bound for Gaussian noncircular signals in Gaussian circular noise. The ML estimator uses the second-order statistics information of a noncircular signal more comprehensively when compared with the cross-correlation (CC) and the conjugate CC estimators. Further, we present a scheme to modify the traditional signal-selective TDOA methods for noncircular signals on the basis of the cyclostationarity of man-made signals. This scheme simultaneously exploits the information contained in both the cyclic cross-correlation (CCC) and the conjugate CCC of a noncircular signal.