Comparison of UWB and WCDMA positioning accuracies

In this article, the performances of positioning technologies in ultra wide band (UWB) and wideband CDMA (WCDMA) systems are compared. Three positioning algorithms are studied, namely the Taylor series (TS), Davidon-Fletcher-Powell (DFP) and the direct method (DM). Results obtained with complete simulation platforms, including channel estimation, synchronization, modulation and detection, are utilized to compare the two technologies. First, the time-of-arrivals (ToAs) obtained with the simulators are used to compute source positions, giving lower bounds on their estimation errors. Then, the signals obtained from the simulators are input into the three algorithms considered. Finally the accuracies of positioning with both technologies are quantified by comparing the root-mean-square error (RMSE) of their respective estimation results using 4 or 5 BSs. The failure rate of the algorithms are also investigated.