Title :
High-precision UWB-based timestamping
Author :
De Dominicis, C.M. ; Flammini, A. ; Rinaldi, S. ; Sisinni, E. ; Cazzorla, A. ; Moschitta, A. ; Carbone, P.
Author_Institution :
Dept. of Inf. Eng., Univ. of Brescia, Brescia, Italy
Abstract :
The work presented in this paper is related with time synchronization for wireless networks. In particular, it is focused on the proposal and experimental evaluation of a low-cost and high precision timestamping technique based on Ultra Wide Band (UWB) signalling. In recent years, the use of such systems has gained an increasing success thanks to their robustness to interferers and multipath. In this paper a new hybrid wireless node is proposed; a traditional IEEE802.15.4 radio, the reference physical layer for wireless sensor networks, is supported by an UWB transceiver. The former is used for communication purposes and allows to preserve compatibility with already installed infrastructures/networks; the latter is used for time of arrival estimation. Hardware prototypes have been realized and experimental tests have shown a sub-nanosecond accuracy. A comparison with commercial solutions has shown a performance improvement with respect to conventional approaches.
Keywords :
Zigbee; radio transceivers; time-of-arrival estimation; ultra wideband communication; wireless sensor networks; IEEE802.15.4 radio; UWB transceiver; high-precision UWB-based timestamping; low-cost high precision timestamping; reference physical layer; time of arrival estimation; time synchronization; ultra wide band signalling; wireless networks; wireless sensor networks; Accuracy; Atmospheric measurements; Protocols; Receivers; Synchronization; Transceivers; Wireless sensor networks; UWB systems; distributed systems; synchronization; wireless sensor network;
Conference_Titel :
Precision Clock Synchronization for Measurement Control and Communication (ISPCS), 2011 International IEEE Symposium on
Conference_Location :
Munich
Print_ISBN :
978-1-61284-893-8
DOI :
10.1109/ISPCS.2011.6070150
