An Ultra-Wideband (UWB) Ad Hoc Sensor Network for Real-time Indoor Localization of Emergency Responders

Lo, Anthony; Yarovoy, Alexander; Bauge, T.; Russell, Mark C.; Harmer, D.; Kull, B.

doi:10.5772/14232

Cited by 5 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…Today UWB radio prices are dropping and as such, they are becoming more affordable to the broad market. This explains the great interest in the subject by the scientific community, resulting in a large quantity of recent scientific papers [ 1 , 2 , 3 ] focusing on UWB indoor localization solutions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Analysis of the Scalability of UWB Indoor Localization Solutions for High User Densities

Ridolfi

Velde

Steendam

et al. 2018

Sensors

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Radio frequency (RF) technologies are often used to track assets in indoor environments. Among others, ultra-wideband (UWB) has constantly gained interest thanks to its capability to obtain typical errors of 30 cm or lower, making it more accurate than other wireless technologies such as WiFi, which normally can predict the location with several meters accuracy. However, mainly due to technical requirements that are part of the standard, conventional medium access strategies such as clear channel assessment, are not straightforward to implement. Since most scientific papers focus on UWB accuracy improvements of a single user, it is not clear to which extend this limitation and other design choices impact the scalability of UWB indoor positioning systems. We investigated the scalability of indoor localization solutions, to prove that UWB can be used when hundreds of tags are active in the same system. This paper provides mathematical models that calculate the theoretical supported user density for multiple localization approaches, namely Time Difference of Arrival (TDoA) and Two-Way Ranging (TWR) with different MAC protocol combinations, i.e., ALOHA and TDMA. Moreover, this paper applies these formulas to a number of realistic UWB configurations to study the impact of different UWB schemes and settings. When applied to the 802.15.4a compliant Decawave DW1000 chip, the scalability dramatically degrades if the system operates with uncoordinated protocols and two-way communication schemes. In the best case scenario, UWB DW1000 chips can actively support up to 6171 tags in a single domain cell (no handover) with well-selected settings and choices, i.e., when adopting the combination of TDoA (one-way link) and TDMA. As a consequence, UWB can be used to simultaneously localize thousands of nodes in a dense network. However, we also show that the number of supported devices varies greatly depending on the MAC and PHY configuration choices.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Analysis of the Scalability of UWB Indoor Localization Solutions for High User Densities

Ridolfi

Velde

Steendam

et al. 2018

Sensors

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Ontrary to widely spread outdoor positioning techniques like GPS, indoor localization systems have to face several difficulties, such as coping with errors due to multi-path and Non-Line-of-Sight (NLOS) conditions, obstacles causing signal scattering and mobile entities that change the propagation channel [1]. Thus, parameters such as accuracy, robustness, coverage and scalability have to be taken into account when designing localization systems.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

WiFi ad-hoc mesh network and MAC protocol solution for UWB indoor localization systems

Ridolfi

Velde

Steendam

et al. 2016

2016 Symposium on Communications and Vehicular Technologies (SCVT)

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Abstract-Ultra-wideband (UWB) is an emerging technology that is well known for its capability to provide centimeter positioning precision which is essential for applications that require very high accuracy. However, although several accuracy improving algorithms have been proposed in scientific literature, solutions to improve the scalability (in terms of coverage and dense user deployments) have not been explored yet or are still under examination. To this end, this paper presents a WiFi-UWB solution in which the UWB indoor localization system is deployed on top of a WiFi ad-hoc mesh network. The combination of a high-throughput WiFi mesh backbone in combination with a high-accuracy UWB radios allows deployment in areas without existing (wired) backbones. Moreover, the possibility for the clients to move around the covered area maintaining fully connectivity (roaming feature) is implemented. Finally, to improve scalability, a Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) MAC protocol that combines WiFi and UWB technologies is proposed, thereby improving the scalability of the network towards multiple mobile users. As such, the solution combines the strengths of the WiFi technology (high throughput and efficient multi-hop meshing with roaming) with the main strengths of UWB (high accuracy localization). Overall the system supports 100 simultaneous clients while supporting multi-hop roaming with 150 ms delays.

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UWB‐Based De‐densification of Spaces and Work Environments

2021

High‐Density and De‐Densified Smart Campus Communications

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An Ultra-Wideband (UWB) Ad Hoc Sensor Network for Real-time Indoor Localization of Emergency Responders

Cited by 5 publications

References 18 publications

Analysis of the Scalability of UWB Indoor Localization Solutions for High User Densities

Analysis of the Scalability of UWB Indoor Localization Solutions for High User Densities

WiFi ad-hoc mesh network and MAC protocol solution for UWB indoor localization systems

UWB‐Based De‐densification of Spaces and Work Environments

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