Performance of Ultra-Wideband Time-of-Arrival Estimation Enhanced With Synchronization Scheme

Ultra-wideband (UWB) radio is a new carrierless communication scheme using impulses and is a candidate technology for future communication and ranging applications. In this paper, we consider the problem of node localizing in ad-hoc networks ,in which positioning algorithm only exploits the high precision ranging capabilities offered by UWB and does not rely on GPS. A Time-of-Arrival (ToA) based ranging scheme using UWB radio link is proposed. In this paper, the problem of ToA estimation in multipath channels, source of estimation error is discussed. Coarse synchronization scheme was used. Results show that the accuracy enhancement depends on two principal factors: the strength of multipath components and the variance of non-line-of-sight (NLOS) delays, which it shows that DS-UWB is best suited for ranging, due to its larger bandwidth and its higher frequencies of operation.