Performance comparison of a TDMA- and CDMA-based UWB Local Positioning System

The development of Local Positioning Systems (LPSs), that allow user positioning in areas where solutions based on GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) fail (as indoor environments), has been an active research field in the last years. In LPSs based on Ultra-Wideband (UWB), near-far effect is a significant issue that severely constrains the system performance. In this work, we present a novel UWB LPS based on CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) and Loosely Synchronized sequences and we compare their performance with an UWB LPS based on TDMA (Time Division Multiple Access), which is a multiple access scheme commonly used to cope with near-far effect. The first approach provides the benefits of simultaneous access, thus minimizing hardware requirements and near-far effect.