Development of ad hoc and wireless sensor networks using ultra wide band (UWB) radio technology

各种调查显示，加拿大消费者和企业对采用新的无线产品以改善他们的生活水平和提高他们的生产力有着浓厚的兴趣。无线接入向面向数据的连接的演变导致了多路接入技术的共存，这些技术提供了新的产品和服务，并显示出改进的系统特性(更低的功耗和更高的数据速率)。在过去的七年里，新的体系结构，如自组织和无线传感器网络，已经产生了关于无线电通信基础设施必须解决的方式的新挑战。与传统方法不同，这些架构需要节点的完全自组织以及对移动性的支持。该研究项目的主要目标是开发高效、协作的基于超宽带(UWB)无线电技术的无线传感器网络(WSN)，以满足这一新市场的需求。该研究计划的第一个目标是将UWB与创新的前端解决方案相结合，以提高系统在不同应用中的性能。第二个目标是将协作算法部署到无线传感器网络中，以便为这些应用找到高效率、低复杂度的解决方案。为了实现这些研究目标，该项目将分为两个不同的方向，并将进行调查。首先，自组织超宽带无线传感器将被设计用于在两个不同的室内环境(建筑内和采矿)中进行协作定位/跟踪。其次，超宽带雷达传感器将设计用于车辆防撞应用，如移动机器人和室外地面车辆。该硬件和算法项目的创新之处在于将自组织网络与使用低复杂度UWB收发器前端的无线传感器设备相结合，并结合新的协作算法，以提供应用灵活性、低成本的产品和高性能的结果。因此，与现有方法相比，改进的系统性能和网络成本代表了该方法的优势。

Various surveys show that Canadian consumers and businesses have a strong interest in adopting new wireless products to improve their standard of living and increase their productivity. The evolution of wireless access towards data-oriented connections, has led to the coexistence of multiple-access technologies providing new products and services, and exhibiting improved system characteristics (lower power consumption and higher data rates). Over the last seven years, novel architectures like ad hoc and wireless sensor networks have generated new challenges regarding the way radio communication infrastructures must be addressed. Unlike traditional approaches, these architectures require complete self-organization of their nodes as well as support for mobility. The main objective of the proposed research project is to develop efficient and cooperative ad hoc and wireless sensor networks (WSN) based on ultra-wideband (UWB) radio technology to meet the requirements of this new market. The first goal of the research program is to apply UWB with innovative front-end solutions to enhance the system performances in different applications. The second goal is to deploy cooperative algorithms applied to WSN in order to find high efficiency solutions with low complexity implementations for these applications. To achieve these research objectives, the project will be divided into two different directions, which will be investigated in parallel. First, ad hoc UWB wireless sensors will be designed for cooperative localization/tracking in two different indoor environments (in-building and mining). Second, UWB radar sensors will be designed for vehicule collision avoidance applications such as mobile robots and outdoor ground vehicles. The originality of this hardware and algorithmic project consists in combining ad hoc network with wireless sensor devices using a low complexity UWB transceiver front-end in conjunction with novel cooperative algorithms to give application flexibilities, low-cost products and high performance results. Consequently, improved system performance and network cost represent the advantages of the proposed approach compared to the existing ones.