System and method for cyclic carrier de-rotation for earliest time of arrival estimation in a wireless communications system

摘要

The present invention relates generally to a system and method for determining the earliest time of arrival of a received signal in a wireless communications system. In particular, the present invention relates to a system and method for de-rotation of the carrier phase of a received signal to offset the effects of combining a received line-of-sight signal with various received multipath artifacts that may shift the complex phase of the received signal. The system and method of the present invention can improve the accuracy of the estimated time of arrival of a received signal by computing the time of arrival of the received signal at numerous different phase references and identifying the earliest of the computed times of arrival.