Lunar Rover Positioning Based on Time of Arrival Measurements of UWB Signals

The application of ultra-wideband (UWB) to lunar rover positioning and navigation shows great foreground for many characteristics of UWB, such as broad transmission wideband, high transmission rate, low power consumption, exceptional multi-path immunity and high localization precision. In the paper, a lunar rover positioning method based on UWB is proposed using exact time-of-arrival (TOA) measurements on the lunar surface. There are two steps in lunar rover localization: the first is to estimate the propagation delays of UWB signals that are sent from a lunar rover. A MUSIC timing estimator is used to estimate the direct-path delay in a DS-UWB system. The second step is a lunar rover positioning algorithm based on obtaining TDOA, AOA and then computing the position. The simulation illustrates that the proposed methods are effective in the lunar rover positioning and navigation.