Ranging Algorithms for Ultrawideband Communication Systems

.In this paper we present ranging algorithms for Ultrawideband (UWB) communications systems and evaluate their performance in indoor propagation environment. Using the UWB transmission technique for ranging is motivated by position accuracy that varies with the inverse of the bandwidth; the larger the bandwidth, the finer the time resolution and therefore the greater the obtained accuracy. We start by explaining the transmitter and receiver architectures based on Impulse Radio (IR) UWB, that are envisaged for the ranging technique. Then, we present the lower performance bound that can be reached by the ranging procedure in terms of Cramer-Rao Bound (CRB). Simulations results based on the IEEE 802.15.4a Personal Area Network (WPAN) standard are presented to illustrate the performance of the proposed ranging algorithms.