Intra-Vehicle Ultra-Wideband Communication Testbed

Modern vehicles are increasingly equipped with more sensors which are connected to control units through cables for transmitting crucial real-time sensing data. To reduce the complexity and cost brought to the automotive design and production by the sensor wiring harness, replacing cables with wireless links has been proposed in [1]. With its fine capability of solving multi-path fading and interference resilience, as well as its freely available spectrum, the ultra-wideband (UWB) technology is considered as a highly promising candidate for such intra-vehicle wireless network. For the purpose of evaluating UWB based sensor network, compared with wired system, from the aspects of performance and reliability in transmitting automotive sensing data, an UWB communication testbed is needed. In this paper we present our first attempt in building an intra-vehicle UWB wireless sensor network to transmit automotive speed data from four wheel speed sensors to the electronic control unit (ECU)
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. Assembly of the testbed consists of ABS motor control simulating system, wheel speed sensors, UWB transmitting nodes and the UWB network coordinator interfacing with ECU. The paper also includes the description of the main testbed software modules and the report of initial measurement result. Future measurement plan and further work needed to improve the testbed are discussed in the conclusion section.