Linear least squares (LLS) estimation is a low complexity but sub-optimum method for estimating the location of a mobile terminal (MT) from some distance measurements. It requires selecting one of the fixed terminals (FTs) as a reference FT for obtaining a linear set of expressions. However, selection of the reference FT is commonly performed arbitrarily in the literature. In this paper, a method for selection of the reference FT is proposed, which improves the location accuracy compared to a fixed selection of the reference FT. Moreover, a covariancematrix based LLS estimator is proposed in line of sight (LOS) and non-LOS (NLOS) environments which further improves accuracy since the correlations between the observations are exploited. Simulation results prove the effectiveness of the proposed techniques. © 2008 IEEE.