The problem of locating mobile stations (MS) in cellular systems based on uplink time difference of arrival (UTDOA) of MS signal at spatially separated base stations with known locations is addressed in this paper. Multi path fading and channel noise are the main factors resulting in inaccurate mobile station position estimation. Therefore, use of the normalized least mean square (NLMS) algorithm based adaptive line enhancer (ALE) followed by a correlator is proposed to obtain more precise time difference of arrival (TDOA) estimation. The proposed technique applies the ALE as a pre-filter to signal cross correlation, leading to improved accuracy in TDOA estimation and consequently more precise positioning of MS. The robustness of the proposed technique is examined and analyzed through computer simulations. Simulation results indicate superior performance of the proposed ALE-UTDOA estimator over the conventional cross correlation method