With the rise of Internet of Things (IoT) technology, the technical requirements for indoor positioning technology are gradually growing. Indoor high-precision positioning technology is obtaining widespread attention from industrial areas, especially the field of safety management for hazardous operators. Ultra-wideband (UWB) technology has become one of research focuses for indoor positioning technology research because of its outperformances treating with multipath resistance, interference resistance, owning high penetration and high accuracy. With the improvements of the management standards, enterprises increasingly need precise positioning in personnel security management, movement track and activity area restrictions. To outline the current development status of the state-of-art in positioning technologies, this study introduces the development and algorithms of UWB positioning technology and related applications in the fields of personnel security, providing a comprehensive reference for personnel positioning and security monitoring. Finally, we introduce an effective positioning approach based on a hand-ring UWB tag, which is capable of real-time monitoring of life safety indicators, such as heart rate and blood oxygen. This hand-ring UWB tag can monitor the both position and human-body healthy status, and will be widely used in various fields in the future.