System implementation study on RSSI based positioning in UWB networks

The Ultra-Wideband Radio Technology (UWB-RT) enables accurate Location and Tracking (LT) applications. However, the required and sophisticated time of arrival (ToA) ranging procedure relies on accurate synchronizations and time measurements. Non-cooperative nodes, not supporting the ToA feature, cannot be localized with this LT approach. Other LT approaches exploit the received signal strength (RSS) or received signal strength difference (RSSD). Simulations of RSS based localization in UWB networks showed promising performance results. In this paper, the authors introduce a RSS based LT demonstrator, build up with conventional Certified Wireless USB (CWUSB) sticks, using multiband UWB-RT. Different LT algorithms are tested. In a small UWB network, measurements of the localization accuracy show a root mean square error (RMSE) of about 0.33 meters.