Realization Limits of Impulse-Based Localization System for Large-Scale Indoor Applications

Abstract

In this paper, a 3D indoor localization demonstrator on the basis of impulse-radio ultrawideband (UWB) technology and time-difference-of-arrival (TDOA) principle is developed and analyzed. The parameters of the transmitter and receiver hardware components are investigated to determine their influence on the localization performance. The signal detection method based on a comparator and the precise time measurement unit was examined. Two effects, namely the threshold-trigger offset and the TDOA variance errors, were quantified. Corrections methods of both these phenomena have been proposed, which delivered very good results in the experiments. With the identified and modeled inaccuracies, the Cramer-Rao lower bound for a 3D TDOA localization system is derived for the first time and verified by measurements, performed in a large-scale industrial environment. The results obtained from measurements follow closely the variance predicted by the CRLB. Moreover, the comparison with the literature published up to date proves the excellent performance of the system presented here.Index Terms-Accuracy, Cramer-Rao lower bound (CRLB), localization, positioning, precision, time-difference-of-arrival (TDOA), ultrawideband (UWB).

I&M in navigation systems [Framing I&M Topics]

“…It indicates that current research is strongly focused on indoor rather than outdoor only navigation [5], [6]. Since there is no dominant technology to realize an indoor navigation and positioning system, the papers appearing in TIM cover a wide set of different approaches and technologies, such as magnetic field sensors [7], ad-hoc UWB sensors [3], [8], ultrasounds [9], wireless RSS, and time-of-flight [10], [11], AC magnetic field sensors [4] and so on. The algorithms used for signal processing are also diversified according to the type of data available for navigation purposes: while [5] and [10] use data fusion approaches, fingerprinting is used in [7], minimum square error-based techniques are used in [3] and [8], and alignment methods are used in [14]- [16].…”

A Novel Ultra-Wideband Hybrid Localization Scheme in Coal Mine

“…Ultra-wideband [6]- [9] technique uses wide bandwidth or very narrow pulses to transmit information. UWB signals have strong penetration performance, which can solve the barrier problem in the process of localization.…”

Evolutionary TDOA-Based Direction Finding Methods With 3-D Acoustic Array

“…The CRLB for a 3-D TDOA localization system is derived for the large-scale industrial environment about indoor applications [15]. The first explicit CRLB formula was derived in [16] to benchmark the DOA estimation covariance matrix, which was valid for the narrowband DOA estimation case.…”