A Preliminary Investigation on Angular Parameters Estimation in a Simplified IR-UWB Indoor Multipath Scenario

This paper presents an algorithm that interprets the waveforms associated with received mutipath components in order to estimate their Direction of Arrival (DoA), Direction of Departure (DoD) and Incident Angle to the Indoor Surface (IAIS) in the context of Impulse Radio - Ultra Wide Band (IR-UWB) communications. The proposed solution combines a deterministic description of the filtering effects of antennas and materials with a simple statistical model for IAIS. Iteratively, a set of jointly estimated path parameters is chosen according to the cross- correlation values obtained with currently resolved paths and predicted waveforms. Following an estimation tree approach, impossible sets are progressively discarded. An Estimation Quality Indicator is defined, in order to handle aberrant configurations made up of five single-bounce estimated paths. We show here that the IR-UWB transmission technology, which benefits from fine resolution capabilities, looks particularly suitable to the discussed algorithm. Assuming known walls material, simulation results are provided to illustrate the performance of such a technique in a simplified peer-to-peer multipath scenario. The proposed solution discloses new perspectives for context-awareness through classical communication links.