Decimetre-Accurate Positioning Using Channel Sounding and UWB: Does RSS Still Play a Role?

Abstract

With the arrival of standards for Ultra-WideBand (UWB) -based and Bluetooth® Channel Sounding-based ranging techniques, indoor positioning is undergoing a transformation. Whereas previously either proprietary radar systems were used or existing communication methods were repurposed, e.g., by measuring the Received Signal Strength (RSS), highly accurate transceiver Integrated Circuits (ICs) are now available to everyone. This paper investigates whether the additional use of the RSS, which is recorded anyway, also brings benefits for these methods. The analysis of both the theoretical limits and the results of our extensive practical measurements shows that the inclusion of RSS is often beneficial. For example, when taking UWB, the most accurate method, as a benchmark, we achieve 10% gain in accuracy indoors and 30% outdoors when we also use Bluetooth® RSS. This is all the more impressive given that positioning based exclusively on RSS is far inferior.