Cramer-Rao Bound for Time-Delay Estimation in the Frequency Domain

In this paper a measure of performance of time delay estimators arising from a frequency model of the received signal is presented. The aim is to derive theoretical analysis of the Cramer-Rao Bound (CRB) for time delay estimation under realistic wireless channel propagation conditions. The derivation of the CRB is considered from the frequency domain signal model yielding a closed-form expression without imposing any constraints on the different propagation paths. Time delay estimation is of paramount importance in communications systems. Range finding in RADAR, synchronization, channel estimation or geo-location are just some of the possible applications.