  We study the estimation of distance d between two wireless nodes by means of
their wideband channels to a third node, called observer. The motivating
principle is that the channel impulse responses are similar for small d and
drift apart when d increases. Following this idea we propose specific distance
estimators based on the differences of path delays of the extractable multipath
components. In particular, we derive such estimators for rich multipath
environments and various important cases: with and without clock
synchronization as well as errors on the extracted path delays (e.g. due to
limited bandwidth). The estimators readily support (and benefit from) the
presence of multiple observers. We present an error analysis and, using ray
tracing in an exemplary indoor environment, show that the estimators perform
well in realistic conditions. We describe possible localization applications of
the proposed scheme and highlight its major advantages: it requires neither
precise synchronization nor line-of-sight connection. This could make wireless
user tracking feasible in dynamic indoor settings.
