Real-Time Noncoherent UWB Positioning Radar With Millimeter Range Accuracy: Theory and Experiment

TLDR

Indoor high‑accuracy wireless localization systems enable applications such as robot control, surgical navigation, sensitive material monitoring, and asset tracking. The paper proposes a novel UWB positioning architecture that fuses carrier‑based and energy‑detection designs. The authors implement this architecture in a standalone noncoherent system and validate it with 1‑D and 3‑D experiments against an optical reference achieving sub‑millimeter accuracy. The system delivers about 2 mm 3‑D accuracy for static targets and 5 mm for dynamic targets indoors, a performance validated by experiments with better than 0.3 mm reference accuracy, representing a major milestone.

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a novel architecture for ultra-wideband (UWB) positioning systems, which combines the architectures of carrier-based UWB systems and traditional energy detection-based UWB systems. By implementing the novel architecture, we have successfully developed a standalone noncoherent system for positioning both static and dynamic targets in an indoor environment with approximately 2 and 5 mm of 3-D accuracy, respectively. The results are considered a great milestone in developing such technology. 1-D and 3-D experiments have been carried out and validated using an optical reference system, which provides better than 0.3-mm 3-D accuracy. This type of indoor high-accuracy wireless localization system has many unique applications including robot control, surgical navigation, sensitive material monitoring, and asset tracking.