UWB ranging with high robustness against dominant jammer and multipath

The problem of reduced ranging resolution of an ultra wideband (UWB) localization system due to interference and multipath is addressed in this letter. We then propose a solution to this problem. The solution originates from the use of a tunnel diode in a leading-edge pulse detection scheme. The tunnel diode transforms the received UWB pulse to another form whereby the level difference between the desired pulse and the noise is increased. This transformation results in a better performance of the detection. However, this method fails in the presence of a dominant jammer, hence, we propose an envelope detector to be added to the structure of the detection in order to recover the performance. The simulation result shows that the proposed method maintains good ranging resolution and outperforms the conventional analog correlation method in a low signal-to-interference ratio (SIR) environment.