A high accuracy mono-station UWB positioning system

Abstract

A unique way to determine the position of an UWB tag relative to a single UWB base station is proposed in this paper. The system is made possible by applying the mono-pulse angle measurement concept of the conventional mono-pulse radar to the UWB system to find the direction of the tag. Together with the range measurement based on the time-of-flight of the UWB pulses, a mono-station UWB positioning system can be built. Low data rate communication function can also be included into the system. A prototype system based on above ideas is implemented. The performance of the system is tested and shows that the STD for the angle estimation is smaller than 1.0deg and for the range estimation is smaller than 2cm. Therefore it is a high accuracy positioning system. Compared with other UWB positioning systems, in that generally more than 3 reference points with known positions are needed, the proposed one need only a single reference. The system is of the simplest configuration and is very easy to be used and very quick in deployment. The possible application of the system to home robot is also described.