  In nonlinear deterministic parameter estimation, the maximum likelihood
estimator (MLE) is unable to attain the Cramer-Rao lower bound at low and
medium signal-to-noise ratios (SNR) due the threshold and ambiguity phenomena.
In order to evaluate the achieved mean-squared-error (MSE) at those SNR levels,
we propose new MSE approximations (MSEA) and an approximate upper bound by
using the method of interval estimation (MIE). The mean and the distribution of
the MLE are approximated as well. The MIE consists in splitting the a priori
domain of the unknown parameter into intervals and computing the statistics of
the estimator in each interval. Also, we derive an approximate lower bound
(ALB) based on the Taylor series expansion of noise and an ALB family by
employing the binary detection principle. The accurateness of the proposed
MSEAs and the tightness of the derived approximate bounds are validated by
considering the example of time-of-arrival estimation.

Applications