Reducing Two-Way Ranging Variance by Signal-Timing Optimization

Time-of-flight-based ranging among transceivers with different clocks requires protocols that accommodate varying rates of the clocks. Double-sided two-way ranging (DS-TWR) is widely adopted as a standard protocol due to its accuracy; however, the precision of DS-TWR has not been clearly addressed. In this paper, an analytical model of the variance of DS-TWR is derived as a function of the user-programmed response delays, which is then compared to the Cramer-Rao Lower Bound (CRLB). This is then used to formulate an an optimization problem over the response delays in order to maximize the information gained from range measurements. The derived analytical variance model and optimized protocol are validated experimentally with 2 ranging UWB transceivers, where 29 million range measurements are collected.