An original correction method for indoor ultra wide band ranging-based localisation system

Abstract

During this decade, Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) brought an increasing interest in the industrial and research world. One of their applications is indoor localization. The ranging, i.e. the distance evaluation mechanism between nodes, is required to determine the position of the nodes. The research work presented in this article aims to use Ultra Wide Band (UWB) radio links to achieve an efficient ranging, based on Time of Flight (ToF) measurement. A good solution consists in integrating ranging traffic into the usual network messages. However, the ToF ranging process is based on information exchanges which are temporally constrained. Once this information is encapsulated into the usual messages, the temporal constraint cannot be honoured, resulting in important ranging errors due to clock drifts. To mitigate these errors, we have introduced an original dynamic correction technique which enables a precision of twenty centimetres allowing the inclusion of ranging traffic in usual traffic.