Performance analysis of an indoor and outdoor real time localization system

Many are the applications of indoor/outdoor localization systems. This paper presents a localization device that uses the UWB technology and the Road Trip Time of Flight technique. The communication protocol has been designed with the aim of reducing the power dissipated by the Anchor nodes, using a low power wake-up channel that wakes up the Anchor nodes and synchronizes them to the Tag whose position must be located. Many experimental measurements in indoor and outdoor conditions have been carried out and the localization results are presented. The error on the distance estimation is about 1 % in outdoor conditions and less than 5% in indoor conditions. The maximum error is less than 25 cm on distances between 2.5 m to 50 m, good results if compared to the results reported in the literature.