Abstract: Determination of distance and/or position relative to one or more points by transmission of a wideband signal by a first antenna, reception of the transmitted wideband signal by a second antenna and comparison of the time delay between the transmitted and received signals. The first and second antennas are connected to a timer/processor unit. One or more of the first or second antennas is movable to an unknown position to be measured, but maintains connection to the timer/processor through a fixed or known delay communication link. The timer/processor contains a time base for generating the transmitted signal and an offset timer for measuring the time delay of the received signal. The received signal may be processed to determine a start time or leading edge that may resolve RF cycle and modulation bandwidth ambiguities and may allow positive determination of distance much shorter than a wavelength at the operation center frequency.

Abstract: A system and method for providing a range (distance) measurement by measuring electromagnetic signal time of flight. The system provides an estimate of the quality of the range measurement by evaluation of the multipath environment based on signal characterization. In one embodiment, a received ultra wideband signal is evaluated by a scanning receiver to produce a channel scan waveform inclusive of the transmitted signal and multipath response. The channel scan waveform is evaluated for envelope rise rate, amplitude, leading edge direct path pulse time, saturation, blockage, and signal history characterization. Signal characteristics are used to determine a signal classification. Signals are then evaluated for quality based on the signal classification. In one embodiment, the signal quality is used to estimate a variance of the range estimate for use in navigation algorithms.

Abstract: A method for processing radio frequency reflections is provided. The method applies an RF waveform to a transmission line that is a conductor used for providing a utility service. The method uses a RF waveform generator to transmit UltraWideband (UWB) RF waveforms through the conductors of a building. The RF waveforms are emitted at emission points that can be impedance discontinuities along the transmission line or impulse radios. The emitted RF waveforms reflect off of objects in the building and are received at reception points that can be impedance discontinuities or impulse radios. These reflections are processed to determine movement of objects within or near the building. Based on the reflections of the RF waveforms, the position of the objects within or near the building can be determined.

Abstract: A System and Method for Person or Object Position Location Utilizing Impulse Radio, comprising a plurality of reference impulse radios; an object or person to be tracked having a mobile impulse radio associated therewith; an architecture with an associated positioning algorithm associated with said plurality of impulse radio reference radios and said mobile impulse radio; and display means for displaying the position of the person or object whose position is to be determined.

Abstract: A System and Method for Person or Object Position Location Utilizing Impulse Radio, comprising a plurality of reference impulse radios; an object or person to be tracked having a mobile impulse radio associated therewith; an architecture with an associated positioning algorithm associated with said plurality of impulse radio reference radios and said mobile impulse radio; and display means for displaying the position of the person or object whose position is to be determined.

Abstract: The present invention is an improved system and method for detecting the leading edge of a waveform. More specifically, the invention relates to detecting the leading edge of an ultra wideband waveform. The invention requires locking to the ultra wideband waveform at a lock reference time, and sampling the ultra wideband waveform during one or more time windows relative to the lock reference time to identify one or more leading edge candidate times based on one or more detection criterion. The ultra wideband signal is sampled at a band limited Nyquist rate that avoids aliasing within a band of interest of the ultra wideband waveform, but allows aliasing outside of the band of interest to minimize the number of samples for leading edge detection processing.

Abstract: An impulse radio communications system using one or more subcarriers to communicate information from an impulse radio transmitter to an impulse radio receiver. The impulse radio communication system is an ultrawide-band time domain system. The use of subcarriers provides impulse radio transmissions added channelization, smoothing and fidelity. Subcarriers of different frequencies or waveforms can be used to add channelization of impulse radio signals. Thus, an impulse radio link can communicate many independent channels simultaneously by employing different subcarriers for each channel. The impulse radio uses modulated subcarrier(s) for time positioning a periodic timing signal or a coded timing signal. Alternatively, the coded timing signal can be summed or mixed with the modulated subcarrier(s) and the resultant signal is used to time modulate the periodic timing signal. Direct digital modulation of data is another form of subcarrier modulation for impulse radio signals.