Design of the UWB Positioning System Simulator for LOS/NLOS Environments

Abstract

UWB is a rapidly developing technology characterised by high positioning accuracy, additional data transferability, and communication security. Low costs and energy demand makes it a system that meets the requirements of smart cities (e.g., smart mobility). The analysis of the positioning accuracy of moving objects requires a ground truth. For the UWB system, it should have an accuracy of the order of millimetres. The generated data can be used to minimize the cost and time needed to perform field tests. However, there is no UWB simulators which can consider the variable characteristics of operation along with distance to reflect the operation of real systems. This article presents a 2D UWB simulator for outdoor open-air areas with obstacles and a method of analysing data from the real UWB system under line-of-sight (LOS) and non-line-of-sight conditions. Data are recorded at predefined outdoor reference distances, and by fitting normal distributions to this data and modelling the impact of position changes the real UWB system can be simulated and it makes it possible to create virtual measurements for other locations. Furthermore, the presented method of describing the path using time-dependent equations and obstacles using a set of inequalities allows for reconstructing the real test scenario with moving tags with high accuracy.