Detection of the Number of Paths over WirelessChannels: A Maximum Likelihood Approach

Abstract

In this paper, we tackle the problem of Multipathdetection for joint angle and delay estimation (JADE) purposes.By exploiting the sparsity feature of a carefully designed pseudo-pdf, we propose a novel approach that enables the accurateestimation of the unknown number of paths over a wide rangeof practical signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs). Computer simulationsshow the distinct advantage of the new solution over state-of-the art techniques in terms of accuracy. Most remarkably, theysuggest that the proposed technique provide accurate estimateseven when the number of paths exceeds the antenna size.