Literature Database Entry

theiler2026understanding

Eric Theiler, "Understanding errors in Wi-Fi Fine Timing Measurements in multi-path environments," Bachelor Thesis, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), TU Berlin (TUB), August 2026. (Advisor: Sascha Rösler; Referees: Falko Dressler and Odej Kao)

Abstract

Since the IEEE 802.11-2016, fine timing measurement (FTM) has been a relevant protocol for outdoor and indoor 3D device localization, which relies on accurate estimation of the exchanged signals’ time of arrival (ToA). However, reflections, scattering, and diffraction distort the received signal and make the ToA estimate harder to obtain. Several methods have been proposed for detecting FTM packets and estimating the propagation delay. These methods include sample-space synchronization techniques as well as subsample-resolution estimators, such as multiple signal classification (MUSIC), ESPRIT, and Matrix Pencil. This thesis compares them through a simulation-based evaluation of ToA estimation errors under different channel conditions. The goal is to assess their accuracy, robustness, and limitations across different propagation scenarios. The results show that, under simple propagation conditions such as Two-Tap and additive white gaussian noise (AWGN), the high-resolution methods outperform the sample-space estimator by up to a factor of 27. Under the investigated TGn multipath channel models of increasing complexity, this advantage becomes less pronounced. This advantage narrows across the TGn multipath models, where the error of all three high-resolution estimators grows with channel complexity and the improvement in the denser scenarios at low signal to noise ratio (SNR) is minor to marginal. At higher SNR, however, the MUSIC and Matrix Pencil methods exhibit the biggest improvements in their error metrics. The Matrix Pencil method achieves the lowest median error in nearly all configurations, but this comes at the cost of an increasingly right-skewed error distribution at higher SNR. ESPRIT is the only method for which the median error increases with SNR in the denser channel models. A raytraced multipath channel with low noise generated in Sionna confirms this picture: all three high-resolution methods reach a lower RMSE and 95th percentile error than sample-space synchronization, although ESPRIT produces pronounced error spikes under unfavourable propagation conditions. Additionally, no impact on the ToA estimation quality of Doppler spreads up to 460 Hz was observed, corresponding to a relative speed between transmitter and receiver of 100 km/h.

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Eric Theiler

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@phdthesis{theiler2026understanding,
    author = {Theiler, Eric},
    title = {{Understanding errors in Wi-Fi Fine Timing Measurements in multi-path environments}},
    advisor = {R{\"{o}}sler, Sascha},
    institution = {School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS)},
    location = {Berlin, Germany},
    month = {8},
    referee = {Dressler, Falko and Kao, Odej},
    school = {TU Berlin (TUB)},
    type = {Bachelor Thesis},
    year = {2026},
   }
   
   

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Last modified: 2026-09-12