Ultra wideband (UWB) radio technology is nowadays one of the most promising technologies for medium-short range communications. It has a wide range of applications including Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) with simultaneous data transmission and location tracking. The combination of location and data transmission is important in order to increase flexibility and reduce the cost and complexity of the system deployment. In this scenario, accuracy is not the only evaluation criteria, but also the amount of resources associated to the location service, as it has an impact not only on the location capacity of the system but also on the sensor data transmission capacity. Although several studies can be found in the literature addressing UWB-based localization, these studies mainly focus on distance estimation and position calculation algorithms. Practical aspects such as the design of the functional architecture, the procedure for the transmission of the associated information between the different elements of the system, and the need of tracking multiple terminals simultaneously in various application scenarios, are generally omitted. This paper provides a complete system level evaluation of a UWB-based communication and location system for Wireless Sensor Networks, including aspects such as UWB-based ranging, tracking algorithms, latency, target mobility and MAC layer design. With this purpose, a custom simulator has been developed, and results with real UWB equipment are presented too.
References
[1]
Liu, H; Darabi, H; Banerjee, P; Liu, J. Survey of wireless indoor positioning techniques and systems. IEEE Trans. Syst. Man Cybern. Part C 2007, 37, 1067–1080.
[2]
Gu, Y; Lo, A; Niemegeers, I. A survey of indoor positioning systems for wireless personal networks. IEEE Commun. Surv. Tutor 2009, 11, 13–32.
[3]
Yang, L; Giannakis, GB. Ultra-Wideband communications, an idea whose time has come. IEEE Signal Process. Mag 2004, 21, 26–54.
[4]
Gezici, S; Tian, Z; Giannakis, GB; Kobayashi, H; Molisch, AF; Poor, HV; Sahino？lu, Z. Localization via ultra-wideband radios. A look at positioning aspects of future sensor networks. IEEE Signal Process. Mag 2005, 22, 70–84.
[5]
Dardari, D; Conti, A; Ferner, UJ; Giorgetti, A; Win, MZ. Ranging with Ultrawide Bandwidth Signals in Multipath Environments; Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers: Washington, DC, USA, 2009; Volume 97, pp. 404–426.
[6]
Güven？, I; Sahino？lu, Z; Orlik, P. TOA estimation for IR-UWB systems with different transceiver types. IEEE Trans. Microw. Theory Tech 2006, 54, 1876–1886.
[7]
Sahinoglu, Z; Gezici, S; Güvenc, I. Ultra-Wideband Positioning Systems; Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, UK, 2008; pp. 63–100.
[8]
Yu, K; Montillet, JP; Rabbachin, A; Cheong, P; Oppermann, I. UWB location and tracking for wireless embedded networks. Signal Process. Spec. Section Signal Process. UWB Commun 2006, 86, 2153–2171.
[9]
IEEE 802.15 Working Group. Part 15.4: Wireless Medium Access Control (MAC) and Physical Layer (PHY) Specifications for Low-Rate Wireless Personal Area Networks (LR-WPANs), Available online: http://profsite.um.ac.ir/~hyaghmae/ACN/WSNMAC1.pdf (accessed on 10 August 2011).
[10]
IEEE 802.15 Working Group. Wireless Medium Access Control (MAC) and Physical Layer (PHY) Specifications for Low-Rate Wireless Personal Area Networks (WPANs): Alternate PHYs, Available online: http://www.it-expo.org/docs/9_2_en.pdf (accessed on 10 August 2011).
[11]
Chu, Y; Ganz, A. A UWB-based 3D location system for indoor environments. Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Broadband Networks (BroadNets 2005), Boston, MA, USA, 3–7 October 2005; pp. 1147–1155.
[12]
Lo, A; Xia, L; Niemegeers, I; Bauge, T; Russell, M; Harmer, D. Europcom—An ultra-wideband (UWB)-based ad hoc network for emergency applications. Proceedings of the 67th IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC2008-Spring), Marina Bay, Singapore, 11–14 May 2008; pp. 6–10.
[13]
Wu, D; Bao, L; Li, R. UWB-based localization in wireless sensor networks. Int. J. Commun. Network Syst. Sci 2009, 2, 407–421.
[14]
Pezzin, M; Bucaille, I; Schulze, T; Pato, AV; de Celis, L. An open IR-UWB platform for LDR-LT applications prototyping. Proceedings of the 6th IEEE Workshop on Positioning, Navigation and Communication (WPNC’09), Hannover, Germany, March 2009; pp. 285–293.
[15]
Giancola, G; Blazevic, L; Bucaille, I; de Nardis, L; di Benedetto, MG; Durand, Y; Froc, G; Cuezva, BM; Pierrot, J; Pirinen, P; et al. UWB MAC and network solutions for low data rate with location and tracking applications. Proceedings of the 2005 IEEE International Conference on UWB (ICUWB 2005), Zurich, Switzerland, 5–8 September 2005; pp. 758–763.
[16]
Venkatesh, S; Buehrer, RM. Multiple-access design for ad hoc UWB position-location networks. Proceedings of IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC 2006), Las Vegas, NV, USA, 3–6 April 2006; pp. 1866–1873.
[17]
Bucaille, I; Tonnerre, A; Ouvry, L; Denis, B. MAC layer design for UWB low data rate systems: PULSERS proposal. Proceedings of the 4th IEEE Workshop on Positioning, Navigation and Communication (WPNC’07), Hannover, Germany, March 2007; pp. 277–283.
[18]
Macagnano, D; Destino, G; Esposito, F; Abreu, GTF. MAC performances for localization and tracking in wireless sensor networks. Proceedings of the 4th IEEE Workshop on Positioning, Navigation and Communication (WPNC’07), Hannover, Germany, March 2007; pp. 297–302.
[19]
Macagnano, D; Abreu, GTF. Tracking multiple targets with multidimensional scaling. Proceedings of the 9th International Symposium on Wireless Personal Multimedia Communications (WPMC 2006), San Diego, CA, USA, 17–20 September 2006; pp. 1118–1123.
[20]
Destino, G; Abreu, G. Improving source localization in NLOS conditions via ranging contraction. Proceedings of the 7th Workshop on Positioning, Navigation and Communication (WPNC’10), Dresden, Germany, 7–8 April 2010; pp. 56–61.
[21]
Daum, F. Nonlinear filters: Beyond the Kalman filter. IEEE Aerosp. Electron. Syst. Mag 2005, 20, 57–69.
[22]
Gustafsson, F; Gunnarsson, F; Bergman, N; Forssell, U; Jansson, J; Karlsson, R; Nordlund, PJ. Particle filters for positioning, navigation and tracking. IEEE Trans. Signal Process 2007, 50, 425–437.
[23]
Bai, F; Helmy, A. A survey of mobility models in wireless ad hoc networks. , 1st edSafwat, A, Ed.; Springer Verlag: Berlin, Germany, 2007.
[24]
Denis, B; Pierrot, JB; Abou-Rjeily, C. Joint distributed time synchronization and positioning in UWB ad hoc networks using TOA. IEEE Trans. Microw. Theory Tech. Spec. Issue Ultra Wideband 2006, 54, 1896–1911.
