UWB-Based NLOS Identification and Mitigation: A Performance Evaluation in Dynamic Settings

Abstract

In the fourth industrial revolution (Industry 4.0), robotics and autonomous navigational systems are essential for smart agriculture. Industrial smart agriculture relies heavily on autonomous navigational systems, which have important uses in unmanned farms, industrial supply chains, etc. For effective navigation of autonomous robotic systems in industrial settings, indoor-based positioning and navigation technologies play key roles. However, positioning performance is severely impacted by the abundance of Non-Line-Of-Sight (NLOS) components due to the dynamic nature of industrial environments. Different approaches have been proposed in literature for identifying and mitigating NLOS components in UWB positioning systems. However, the performance of these proposed approaches on par in multiple distinct environments is unknown. In this paper, we experimentally investigate and compare the performance of recent UWB-based state-of-the-art approaches to NLOS identification and mitigation on par, in distinct and dynamic obstructed settings to ascertain two key insights: i) how the performance of existing approaches change based on the environment type; ii) the impact of the environment type on NLOS identification and mitigation.