volume | PIER Journals

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a reference range correlation-based (RRcR) ranging technique suitable for low-power on-body wireless body sensor networks (WBSNs) via ultra wideband (UWB) radios. The proposed technique is based on the presence of reference nodes, and is assumed to have line-of-sight (LOS) links. We show that the performance of the proposed technique outperforms matched-filtering-based time-of-arrival (MF-TOA) estimators with no a priori and with perfect channel knowledge. We further show that increasing the number of reference node up to twenty provides significant enhancement in the performance traded for higher overall power consumption. Then, we study the effect of timing-misalignment on the Ziv-Zakai lower bound (ZZLB), and provide numerical results. The presented results are based on simulations in the IEEE 802.15.6a on-body-to-on-body channel (CM3) in the UWB band as well as actual measurements.

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Dr. Heba A. Shaban

Dr. Mohamad Abou El-Nasr

Dr. R. Michael Buehrer