Experimental validation of a TOA UWB ranging platform with the energy detection receiver

Abstract

Despite a vast body of research on ultra-wideband (UWB) ranging and localization, relatively little knowledge is available regarding practical implementations of the proposed ideas. Although there are some testbeds already proposed and built, most of them imply a sort of correlation and require very high sampling rates (in the order of several GS/s) which are still difficult to realize in hardware. Moreover, the majority of the platforms does not support visualization of results in real-time. Details on the hardware implementation of the commercially available products, e.g. Ubisense or Time Domain, are not publicly accessible. In this paper, results on the experimental validation of the UWB-based ranging platform with real-time signal processing are presented. The platform is based on the time-of-arrival (ToA) technique and relatively simple to implement non-coherent energy detection receiver architecture. Such a receiver does not require high sampling rates nor inform ation about the channel. Our measurement results indicate that it is possible to achieve ranging accuracy of 1-2 cm with the sampling rate of 500 MS/s and with max. 3 bits of the A/D resolution

Robust TOA-based Navigation under Measurement Model Mismatch in Harsh Propagation Environments

“…How to deal with measurements under the contamination model in (7) has been studied for several decades in the field of robust statistics. A recent publication provides an excellent introduction with several applications to practical signal processing problems [11].…”

Wireless Body Area Networks

“…These systems are purposely built, and thus expensive [9]. These systems are purposely built, and thus expensive [9].…”

Robust TOA-Based UAS Navigation under Model Mismatch in GNSS-Denied Harsh Environments

“…This is the case of impulse-radio Ultra-Wideband (UWB) technologies, which are typically based on time-of-arrival (TOA) two-way ranging measurements and can achieve a sub-decimeter level ranging accuracy in line-of-sight (LOS) nominal conditions [5,18], being two orders of magnitude lower than GNSS and LTE ranging measurements. UWB-based positioning has been mainly explored as an alternative for indoor positioning where GNSS is not available [19][20][21][22][23]. With respect to other ranging technologies, UWB has the additional advantage to be more robust to interference.…”