An experimental performance study of an original ranging protocol based on an IEEE 802.15.4a UWB testbed

Abstract

In this article, we study the behaviour of an Ultra-Wide Band (UWB) physical layer when executing our protocol Parallel Symmetric Double-Sided Two-Way Ranging. We compare it to the reference protocol introduced in IEEE 802.15.4a Symmetric Double-Sided Two-Way Ranging, in terms of precision of the obtained estimates and to other existing protocols such as SDS-TWR-MA and D-TWR in terms of overhead. These samples were obtained using a testbed made of IEEE 802.15.4a UWB nodes. From these first experiments, we derive a simple correction mechanism which reduces the localisation error compared to the case where no dynamic correction takes place. The location error reduction varies between 41 and 60% while the algorithm manages to estimate the position 99.9% of the time with the addition of the correction.