Abstract
Time delay estimation has been a research topic of significant
practical importance in many fields (radar, sonar, seismology,
geophysics, ultrasonics, hands-free communications, etc.). It is a
first stage that feeds into subsequent processing blocks for
identifying, localizing, and tracking radiating sources. This area
has made remarkable advances in the past few decades, and is
continuing to progress, with an aim to create processors that are
tolerant to both noise and reverberation. This paper presents a
systematic overview of the state-of-the-art of
time-delay-estimation algorithms ranging from the simple
cross-correlation method to the advanced blind channel
identification based techniques. We discuss the pros and cons of
each individual algorithm, and outline their inherent
relationships. We also provide experimental results to illustrate
their performance differences in room acoustic environments where
reverberation and noise are commonly encountered.