Integration and Prototyping of a Pulsed RF Oscillator with an UWB Antenna for Low-Cost, Low-Power RTLS Applications

The goal of this paper is to present a compact low-cost and low-power prototype of a pulsed UltraWide Band (UWB) oscillator and an UWB elliptical dipole antenna integrated on the same Radio Frequency (RF) Printed Circuit Board (PCB) and its digital control board for Real Time Locating System (RTLS) applications. The design is compatible with IEEE 802.15.4 high rate pulse repetition UWB standard being able to work between 6 GHz and 8.5 GHz with 500 MHz bandwidth and with a pulse duration of 2 ns. The UWB system has been designed using the CST Microwave Studio transient Electro-Magnetic (EM) circuit co-simulation method. This method integrates the functional circuit simulation together with the full wave (EM) simulation of the PCB’s 3D model allowing fast parameter tuning. The PCB has been manufactured and the entire system has been assembled and measured. Simulated and measured results are in excellent agreement with respect to the radiation performances as well as the power consumption. A compact, very low-power and low-cost system has been designed and validated

A low-cost indoor real time locating system based on TDOA estimation of UWB pulse sequences

One of the most popular technologies adopted for indoor localization is ultrawideband impulse radio (IR-UWB). Due to its peculiar characteristics, it is able to overcome the multipath effect that severely reduces the capability of receivers (sensors) to estimate the position of transmitters (tags) in complex environments. In this article, we introduce a new low-cost real-time locating system (RTLS) that does not require time synchronization among sensors and uses a one-way communication scheme to reduce the cost and complexity of tags. The system is able to evaluate the position of a large number of tags by computing the time difference of arrival (TDOA) of UWB pulse sequences received by at least three sensors. In the presented system, the tags transmit sequences of 2-ns UWB pulses with a carrier frequency of 7.25 GHz. Each sensor processes the received sequences with a two-step correlation analysis performed first on a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) chip and successively on an on-board processor. The result of the analysis is the time of arrival (TOA) of the tag sequence at each sensor and the ID of the associated tag. The results are sent to a host PC implementing trilateration algorithm based on the TDOA computed among sensors. We will describe the characteristics of the custom hardware that has been designed for this project (tag and sensor) as well as the processing steps implemented that allowed us to achieve an optimum localization accuracy of 10 cm

Applications of Antenna Technology in Sensors

During the past few decades, information technologies have been evolving at a tremendous rate, causing profound changes to our world and to our ways of living. Emerging applications have opened u[ new routes and set new trends for antenna sensors. With the advent of the Internet of Things (IoT), the adaptation of antenna technologies for sensor and sensing applications has become more important. Now, the antennas must be reconfigurable, flexible, low profile, and low-cost, for applications from airborne and vehicles, to machine-to-machine, IoT, 5G, etc. This reprint aims to introduce and treat a series of advanced and emerging topics in the field of antenna sensors