Design of an Energy-efficient Hybrid UWB-RF Indoor Distance Estimation System

Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) plays a significant role in modern applications by offering different services, including state machines monitoring, predictive maintenance, and vehicle/store tracking. In such applications, it is crucial to apply localization methods to identify the current location of sensor nodes with high accuracy. Due to the energy constraint of sensor nodes, the energy consumption needs to be highly considered while performing the localization process. In this regard, this paper aims to design an energy-efficient and accurate localization system. Therefore, a novel hybrid solution is designed involving the Ultra Wide Band (UWB) technology and Radio Frequency (RF) transceiver. The UWB is based on Decawave’s DWM1000 transceiver, which provides accurate distance measurements with a high power consumption. To reduce the power consumption, the data transmission between nodes is performed by the low-power RF transceiver. Using this architecture, the experimental validation shows a good performance in both power consumption and accuracy. The system’s overall power consumption is reduced as well as a 10-centimeter accuracy level is achieved.