Location Accuracy of An UWB Localization System in A Multi-Path Environment
Location Accuracy of An UWB Localization System in A Multi-Path Environment
Location Accuracy of An UWB Localization System in A Multi-Path Environment
I. INTRODUCTION
An application utilizing the radio frequency (RF) channel is
commonly called ultra wide-band (UWB), if the covered
bandwidth is >0.5GHz or >20% of the center frequency. Until
recently, only niche applications like radar or military
communications deserved to be called UWB. This is different
today, where numerous companies and universities investigate
applications utilizing the radio frequency band from 3.1GHz
to 10.6GHz, whose usage has passed standardization through
the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) [1] in the
U.S.A. and is soon expected to be standardized by the
European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) [2]
in Europe.
Besides the established companies with know how in UWB
technology such as TimeDomain [3], the majority of
commercial market players in this area currently focuses on
short-range medium- to high-rate communication applications
for so-called wireless personal area networks (WPAN). A
number of companies already offer chip sets for the high datarate WPAN standard IEEE802.15.3a [4] implementing the
multi-band orthogonal frequency division multiplex (MOFDM) approach such as [5-8]. Impulse radio (IR) utilizing
pulse position modulation (PPM) or chirp spread spectrum
(CSS) modulation are two methods for UWB communication,
which have been approved as candidates for the low data-rate
WPAN standard IEEE802.15.4a [9]. The potential of location
and tracking applications has been discussed by this task
The authors are with the Center for Microelectronics Aargau, University of
Applied Sciences NorthWest Switzerland, Steinackerstr. 1, 5210 Windisch,
Switzerland, e-mail: {m.tuechler, v.schwarz, a.huber}@zma.ch.
R 2 .5 c T
taken from [12] (p. 183), where c is the speed of light. This
formula holds for small FT by directly calculating the tag
coordinate (x,y,z) from the time-of-flight measurements.
Similar studies on FR have been conducted in [15-17], but
without incorporating the UWB regulatory constraints and the
effects of a multi-path RF channel.
CMOS integrated circuit
Base
station
cable
Sampler
Base
station
Antenna
LNA
Sampler
Signal
Correlator processing
Sampler
Tag
TX/RX
switch
Tag
Base
station
Delay lock
loop
Clock
Processing
hub
Base
Tag
station
eR = ( x x ) 2 + ( y y ) 2 + ( z z ) 2
between the true coordinates (x,y,z) of a tag and its estimate.
Commercially available wireless localization systems achieve
an accuracy FR down to 10-15cm under LOS conditions in a
50m working range [13] or FR=30cm under LOS conditions in
a working range of 100m [14]. For the applications we have in
mind, a significantly improved accuracy in the cm range under
LOS conditions indoors is required. The desired working
range is at least 20m. Our goal is to determine the ranging
accuracy FR for our system depending on the RF channel
characteristics (multi-path distribution, path loss, noise). Note
that there are numerous other parameters affecting FR such as
the antenna (geometry, aperture, gain, reference point) and the
transceiver circuitry (noise figure, amplifier bandwidth,
sampling rate, sampling time jitter, clock stability). These
circuitry-level parameters as well as some system-level issues
(base station clock synchronization, algorithm for coordinate
calculation, pulse repetition rate, ) are considered in [11].
In the sequel, we obtain lower bounds and simulation results
on the standard deviation FT of the time measurement errors
eT , i = Ti Ti
Ampli.
Pulse
shaper
Control
s R (t) = G path sT (t Ti ) + a k sT (t Ti k ) ,
k =1
where Gpath is the path loss, sT(t) is the effective transmit pulse
including the impulse responses of the TX and RX antenna,
respectively, and ak is the coefficient of the k-th multi-path
component of the transmitted pulse arriving at the base station
with delay k relative to the LOS component. We apply a
modified Saleh-Valenzuela channel model [18] to describe the
RF channel, i.e., the distribution of the parameters ak and k.
Figure 3 depicts some channel realizations (channel impulse
responses, CIRs) for this model, which were taken from [9].
For zero gain TX and RX antennas, the path loss Gpath is
approximately given by
Gpath = (c / 4f cg ) 2 d 2 ,
where fcg is the geometric center frequency of the pulse and d
is the distance between the antennas [11].
The received pulse sR(t) is amplified with a CMOS wide-band
low noise amplifier (LNA). State-of-the-art CMOS LNAs for
the frequency band from 3.1GHz to 10.6GHz such as that
proposed in [19] achieve an average power gain Glna of 9dB
and an average noise figure knf of 5.2dB in that band. The total
noise power is knf N0 BR, where BR is the receiver bandwidth
d
P
k nf N 0
2
,
2
c G lna E T
+ J ,
T >
2
Z
c G lna E T
P
1Bit quantization, with sample time jitter:
2
2 k nf N 0
d
2
+ J,
T >
2 c Glna ET
Z
P
ET =
(t ) 2 dt
rk = sk +nR .
n =0
The registers are red out for further processing if |rk| for some
k exceeds a predefined threshold. In this case, the base station
assumes that a pulse has been received.
The smallest possible standard deviation FT of the time
measurement error given the data set {rk} with any type of
signal processing is determined by the Cramer-Rao bound
T I F 1 ,
TX
RX
Ti
Ti
IV. RESULTS
From Figure 4 and the analysis in the previous section
followed that a wireless localization system achieves a
ranging error standard deviation FR of at most
2.5cFT=2.5c80.5ps=3mm at the distance d=50m between
the TX and RX antenna given the system and pulse
parameters defined in Figure 4 and a multi-path free RF
channel. This bound can be compared to the simulation results
in Figure 6. For determining the arrival time Ti, maximum
likelihood estimation was applied [20]. To synchronize the tag
and the base station clock, the tags transmit an initial
synchronization sequence, which is used by the base station to
reduce the clock skew (chosen uniformly distributed in the
range 20ppm) down to <1ppm. The simulation results show
that the time measurement error standard deviation is very
close to the bound FT in a working range of up to d=20m. For
example, from Figure 4 and the ratio fcq/fcq,e=8 follows that
FT=80.4ps=3.2ps holds, which coincides with the simulation
result in Figure 6. For larger distances d, our synchronization
procedure starts to become unreliable causing large estimation
errors. Ongoing work includes improving the synchronization
algorithm applied so far in order that the working range of the
system (which strongly depends on the number P of
transmitted pulses) increases. The slight increase of the error
for small distances d in Figure 6 is due to the applied 1Bit
quantization, since the arrival time estimation algorithm
requires a very low SNR to work properly. This does not hold
for small distances d.
The simulation results in Figure 7 were obtained in a
residential indoor environment. Even though the
corresponding channel model CM1 taken from [9] is defined
for the distance range 0<d<4m, we applied it for 0<d<20m in
order that the simulation results focus on the dependency of
the decaying SNR with increasing d. Given this multi-path RF
channel model, the increase in the measurement error is
tremendous. The ranging error standard deviation at d=20m is
now in the meter range, since FR=2.5c12ns=9m holds.
However, a closer look at the histograms of the estimation
error eT,I reveals that the loss in measurement accuracy is
because the LOS component has been missed by the estimator
for some particular channel realizations. In Figure 8 are shown
V. CONCLUSIONS
The achievable time measurement accuracy of our UWB
transceiver design is much lower than that of commercially
available localization systems [13;14] or that obtained in
related work on UWB localization systems [21;22]. However,
we focused on the accuracy of a single pulse transmission
experiment and did not include other system aspects such as
the synchronization of the base stations time bases into the
error analysis. We showed that the achievable arrival time
measurement accuracy does not depend on the pulse center
frequency fc or bandwidth B in a measurement interval equal
to [0,1/(2fc)], which corresponds to a few cm if the considered
UWB pulses have their fc in the UWB frequency band from
3.1 to 10.6GHz. In the measurement interval [0,), the time
measurement accuracy declines approximately by the ratio of
the pulse bandwidth B and the center frequency fc. In order to
keep this decline short, a pulse with large bandwidth B must
be used. We also showed why short transmit pulses are
necessary in a multi-path RF channel to maintain the arrival
time measurement accuracy. Our simulation results revealed
the problem of determining the LOS component of the
received UWB pulse in a multi-path RF channel. Ongoing
work should therefore focus on how to improve the
probability that the LOS components of the UWB pulses
transmitted by the tags can be detected. This is hard to achieve
with a minimal configuration of tags and base stations, i.e., the
localization system must offer redundant base stations to
obtain further measurement information, e.g., through a sensor
network of tags, which are able to transmit and receive UWB
pulses.
[5]
[6]
[7]
[8]
[9]
[10]
[11]
[12]
Oppermann, I., Hmlinen, M., and Iinatti, J., UWB Theory and
Applications Wiley, 2004.
[13]
[14]
[15]
[16]
[17]
[18]
[19]
[20]
[21]
[22]
VI. REFERENCES
[1]
[2]
[3]
[4]