A ranging system includes an input for receiving a wireless signal and a detector for determining an estimate of a time-of-arrival of the wireless signal at the ranging system. The detector includes a first module for processing the wireless signal according to a non-linear, monotonic transformation to generate a modified signal, a second module for compressing the modified signal according to a linear transformation, resulting in a compressed signal including a number of elements, each element corresponding to a different time segment of the modified signal, and a third module for applying a decision function for determining an output including a first element of the number of elements, corresponding to the time-of-arrival of the wireless signal at the ranging system, applying the decision function, including comparing the elements of the compressed signal to corresponding thresholds of a number of thresholds associated with the number of elements.