A direct-sequence ultra-wideband impulse radio (DS-UWB-IR) system is developed for low-power wireless applications such as wireless sensor networks. This system adopts impulse radio characterized by a low duty cycle, and a direct-sequence 0.7-GHz bandwidth, which enables low-power operation and extremely precise positioning. Simulation results reveal that the system achieves a 250-kbps data rate for 30-m-distance wireless communications using realistic specifications. We also conduct an experiment that confirms the feasibility of our system.

In this work, a time-of-arrival/time-difference-of-arrival (TOA/TDOA) hybrid relative positioning system based on UWB-IR technology is developed. The system reduces both the complexity of system configuration and the number of wireless transmissions in a positioning sequence. The system performance over various distances between access points is verified by computer simulations and experiments under the assumption that the distance between the access points is less than that between the access point and the target node. For the experiments, the proposed system is implemented with in-house developed UWB transceivers. The experiments confirm that the developed TOA/TDOA hybrid system can detect the relative positions of target nodes (under the condition of two access points 4 m apart) with a measured-angle accuracy of 8.6 degrees.

In this work, an ultra-wideband impulse radio (UWB-IR) transceiver with accurate time-of-arrival (TOA) estimation for a ranging/positioning system was developed for wireless sensor network applications. The system uses an impulse radio characterized by a low duty cycle and direct-sequence spreading, which enable very precise ranging and good receiver sensitivity. An algorithm enabling the TOA of the first-path signal to be measured accurately in a multi-path environment with simple, low-power and low cost implementations was proposed. UWB chips with CMOS 0.18-µm technology and UWB transceiver modules performed that the accuracy of the proposed ranging system is 18.5 cm in a closed space.

An original asynchronous Ultra Wideband -- Impulse Radio (UWB-IR) wireless location system for sensor network is developed and evaluated through experiments. The system enables wireless nodes to be located and communicated with simultaneously at low power and low cost. The proposed system does not need system synchronization. Each access point of the proposed location system measures the time difference between two signals' received timing: one is from target node, and the other is from an access point, the position of which is already known. Then the position of the target nodes is calculated by a pseudo Time Difference of Arrival (TDOA) method. We first introduce the system configuration and asynchronous TDOA method adopted in this system. Next, we estimate the received-signal-timing measurement accuracy of UWB-IR signal and evaluate it in experiments using prototype UWB-IR transceivers. Then we estimate the location accuracy by the horizontal dilution of precision (HDOP) metric and show the field trial results of using the prototype UWB-IR location system.