Tridimensional Representation and Analysis of Ultra Wideband using Two Way Ranging for Maritime and Sports Applications

Ultra-Wideband (UWB) technology proved its applicability in maritime, medical and sport environments. Tracking assets and personnel in maritime environments and elderly in retirement homes. In this paper, we analyse the behaviour of Two Way Ranging (TWR), an UWB radio based localisation method. The purpose of the study is to understand UWB behaviour at short range or medium range for future data set creation with the constrain of using a single anchor or a reduced number of devices. To this end, we created two-dimensional (2D) and tri-dimensional (3D) representations of the localisation information provided by the NXP SR150 anchor and an NXP SR040 tag. The determination was made using angle of arrival in a frontal cone with phase difference of arrival (PDoA) realised between its antennae. The outcome of the study and measurements shows that the standard deviation of the measured position by means of UWB increases with range from an average of 0.84 cm at 0.25 m to 3.68 cm at 3 m. If the anchor is covered by a blocking medium such as ice or by a human hand, the AoA will be highly affected and the percentage of non-line-of-sight transmissions will be increased. The general behaviour is quite linear and can be used for future data sets useful for training machine learning algorithms.