Asynchronous time difference of arrival positioning system and implementation
Date
2016-07-20
Authors
He, Shuai
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Abstract
In this thesis, a complete localization system using asynchronous time difference of arrival (A-TDOA) technique has been thoroughly studied from concept to implementation. The work spans from a proposal of a new A-TDOA system deployment and modeling, through a derivation of the achievable estimation bound, to estimation algorithms development, to a hardware realization, and ultimately to measurements conducted in realistic radio environments.
The research begins with a new deployment of an A-TDOA localization system. Compared to the conventional time of arrival (TOA) and time difference of arrival (TDOA) systems, it does not require clock synchronization within the network, which enables a flexible and fast deployment. When deployed in the simplest form, it can effectively reduce system complexity and cost, whereas if all anchor nodes are equipped with full transmit and receive capability, the A-TDOA system can achieve superior performance using a novel receiver re-selection technique.
Determining the physical position of a target node in a noisy environment is critical. In this thesis, two novel algorithms, namely, a two-step and a constrained least squares (CLS) algorithms, are proposed offering excellent accuracy and the best trade-off between complexity and precision respectively. The two-step algorithm exploits the advantages of the semi-definite programming (SDP) and the Taylor method, i.e., global convergence and high precision, to achieve superior performance. The CLS algorithm significantly reduces the computation complexity while achieving good accuracy.
Despite extensive research efforts on ranging and localization modeling and simulation, knowledge about practical implementations is limited. For the first time, a complete prototype based on A-TDOA technique is implemented in hardware. All sub-systems are developed from scratch and undergone significant modifications for improved reliability. The design objective is low cost and low complexity, and therefore a non-coherent receiver architecture was adopted. The target node design is based on receive and re-transmit technique and is prototyped in analog domain to avoid clock offset and skews. The implemented system has been extensively tested in an outdoor and indoor radio environments. The accuracy obtained are 20.7 cm and 15.2 cm respectively. Comparison with the literature published up to date proves the excellent quality of the design and implementation. To better understand the localization accuracy, the error sources due to thermal noise, hardware limitation, radio propagation channel and clock jitter are identified and investigated. Mitigation methods are proposed to reduce errors.
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Keywords
localization system, Asynchronous Time Difference of Arriva, positioning system, prototype, localization algorithm, system implementation