Enhanced TOA estimation in IR-UWB ranging via baker coded pulse trains

In this paper, we adopt a novel waveform for impulse radio ultra wideband (IR UWB) ranging and positioning, which is a Barker coded Gaussian pulse train. The waveform can enhance both signal to ratio (SNR) and time of arrival (TOA) estimation or ranging performance compared to traditional single Gaussian pulse or identical Gaussian pulse train. It can sharpen the main peak and suppress the sidelobes of the processed signals by matched filter (MF) while accomplishing the similar range resolution with conventional single Gaussian pulse. As it can distinguish significantly one user from another even when users are just tens of centimeters apart, while traditional method may produce a wrong TOA estimate. The study analyzes these different waveforms via ambiguity function (AF) to prove theoretically the effectiveness of the waveform. Computer simulation further verifies its superiority compared with traditional waveform under the additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel.