A Distributed UWB-based Localization System in Underground Mines

The location of people, mobile terminals and equipment is highly desirable for operational enhancements in the mining industry. In an indoor environment such as a mine, the multipath caused by reflection, diffraction and diffusion on the rough sidewall surfaces are the main sources of range measurement errors. In this paper, a UWB time of flight based localization system is proposed to address the multipath effect in underground mines. To reduce the communication cost and time delay of localization in such a chain type wireless network, a distributed localization algorithm based on particle swarm optimization (PSO) is proposed and implemented on the blind node (the node to be localized). Without extra hardware needed, an accurate but low cost localization system has been achieved. Experimental results verify the proposed scheme.