Abstract: It is essential to extract and measure the time difference for the passive time difference of arrival (TDOA) location system. A high precision time difference extraction and measurement method is proposed in order to solve the problem that time difference extraction precision is low for wideband frequency-agile signal or complex waveform modulated pulse signal by common detection method. The time synchronization error is decreased by arrival signal′s bidirectional comparison between different measurement devices. The time measurement precision is promoted by dynamic detection of pulse signal based on autoregressive moving average and constant false-alarm rate model (ARMA-CFAR). The simulation results show that the time difference extraction and measurement precision can be effectively increased, which proceed to improve TDOA localization accuracy.