Design Of Indoor Positioning System Based Upon Ultra Wide Band

Tracking and positioning applications have gained popularity in recent years with the integration of GPS with smart mobile phones and handheld devices. Location awareness of person, article or commodity of trade has become an essential demand by users. GPS system is omnipresent system and commonly available in market and also available in most of smart phones. By means of positioning satellite, geographical location can be easily obtained but it requires a clear line of sight between the GPS and satellite. It has been revealed by empirical models that GPS is not suitable for indoor environments as the signal strength is attenuated in indoor structures and its possible use in indoor environments cannot be fully exploited. Nowadays, Indoor positioning of person and commodities has become essential requirement for its potential use in supermarkets, hotels, warehouses hospitals etc.For indoor positioning there are alternate wireless technologies that can be used such as RFID, Bluetooth, and Ultrasound and UWB system. In this thesis various indoor technologies have been be explored and proposes the best indoor positioning technology that can be used i.e UWB(Ultra Wide Band) because of its low energy, high bandwidth and fine of time resolution characteristics which makes it ideal technology for the implementation for indoor positioning technology. It also explores in depth, about the algorithms used for location purposes such as TOA, TDOA, AOA and RSSI which can be used efficiently in the indoor environments.Practical tests in lab environment were done in different multipath scenarios to measure the accuracy level of UWB system based upon TDOA algorithm to proof the effectiveness of the system with maximum reliability. Various setup models are designed in lab environment in different multipath interference environments and measurements transmitter position were calculated. The setup configuration were also tested across 0.3m wall separated between the receivers and transmitters. Data gathered from various experiments proved that the system can be used when precision and accuracy in measurement up to centimeter level is required.At the end, a solution is proposed to a problem related to power system engineers in their daily field operations. In case of fault at substation, to reach substation sometimes become very challenging because of complex building structures and lack of positioning guidance equipment. From the lab experiment it is proved that the use of UWB equipment is practically suitable with the measurement accuracy upto centimeter level which will help them in speedy location finding of substation and to reduce the down time of substation.