Joint TOA and AOA Estimation for UWB Localization Applications

A joint TOA/AOA estimator is proposed for UWB indoor ranging under LOS operating conditions. The estimator employs an array of antennas, each feeding a demodulator consisting in a squarer and a low-pass filter. Signal samples taken at Nyquist rate at the filter outputs are processed to produce TOA and AOA estimates. Performance is assessed with transmitted pulses with a bandwidth of either 1.5 GHz (type-1 pulses) or 0.5 GHz (type-2 pulses), which correspond to sampling rates of 3 GHz and 1 GHz, respectively. As expected, the estimation accuracy decreases with the pulse bandwidth. Ranging errors of about 10 cm and angular errors of about 1° are achieved at SNR of practical interest with type-1 pulses and two antennas at a distance of 50 cm. With type-2 pulses the errors increase to 35 cm and 3°. Comparisons are made with other schemes discussed in literature.