A Modified Signal Phase Unwrapping Algorithm for Range Estimation

The Chinese Remainder Theorem (CRT) enables phase unwrapping for measurement of a distance using multiple wrapped phases of sinusoidal transmissions, such as in radar, sonar, or wireless geolocation. In the presence of measurement noise, the existing CRT algorithm assumes that the correct number of wrapping wavelengths can be obtained after a round off operation by ignoring the received signal noise. In this paper, additional hypotheses for the output of the round off process are formulated and a modified CRT algorithm for range estimation is proposed. We show that an improved distance reconstruction rate over the existing CRT algorithm is achieved from both analytical calculations and numerical simulations.