Ranging in UWB using commercial radio modules: Experimental validation and NLOS mitigation

Ultra wide band (UWB) wireless transmission has received notable and considerable attention in the field of next generation location-aware wireless sensor networks (WSNs). This trend is due to the large bandwidth of UWB signals contributing many advantages for positioning, communication, and radar applications: penetration through obstacles, accurate position estimation, high-speed data transmission, and a low-cost, low power transceiver. Commercially available UWB radio modules were evaluated. Such modules have the ability to very precisely measure time of arrival of RF signals, range, or localization. The physical layers specify the received signal strength indicator utilized in the localization technique.We estimated and compared the distance of a walking human with the reference distance in different environments, indoor LOS and hard-NLOS utilizing one of these commercial modules. This report also introduces the identification and mitigation of NLOS channels. The results were highly acceptable for indoor localization because the module attained ranging accuracy in a hard-NLOS environment below one meter.