Is Ultra-Wideband (UWB) the next big wireless technology for smart homes?
motion tracking by ensuring the UWB radio- equipped devices could carry out the following: ■ localise themselves to each other ■ track the changes in the channel impulse response of each communication channel ■ fuse each observed change into a position estimate of a nearby person
to digital bits, modulates it in the UWB pulse generator, and transmits it through the UWB antenna. The energy detection receiver then demodulates the received data and uploads it to the middleware at the receiver side, ensuring adequate temperature monitoring in smart homes. Since users prefer to access environmental parameters measured by the sensor nodes through a hardware- independent interface in smart home applications, this use case incorporates a software infrastructure. Figure 4 presents the software framework. The image to the left shows the software infrastructure layout, while the right represents the measured temperature layout. A dedicated interface of the software framework receives all the information coming from the wireless sensor nodes (WSNs). Relevant information (i.e., temperature measurement) remains available for the end- user to view and manage in the application-client layer of the framework. This UWB- enabled software-hardware integration aids the deployment
Figure 2: Schematic for UWB Radio-Equipped Devices for Smart Home Applications. Credit: Ledergerber & D’Andrea (2020)
To further explore the working principles of a UWB- equipped smart home system, the remainder of this section explores a use case: one that incorporates a low-energy UWB sensor node software and hardware design into room temperature monitoring. Figure 3 presents a typical UWB system architecture and refers (left to right) to the UWB signal transmitter and receiver within the sensor node and the control system, respectively. To summarise the working principle of the UWB system architecture, the sensor node converts the physical information, e.g., room temperature,
home applications [2] , e.g., light and temperature monitoring and control (see applications section). To further consider monitoring applications, UWB radio-equipped devices can track movements within their surroundings by detecting channel impulse response changes of each communication channel and intersecting their corresponding multi-static radar network. Figure 2 presents a conceptualised UWB-based monitoring application. Designers of this simplified UWB- based system achieved adequate
Figure 3: UWB System Architecture. Credit: Khajenasiri et al. (2014)
Controller & Interface
Micro Controller
Sensor
UWB Rx
UWB Tx
Middleware
UWB Signal
Power Supply
Power Supply
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