Enhancing Reliability, Throughput, and Energy Efficiency in UWB-based Applications
Ultra-wideband (UWB) radios are becoming increasingly popular among researchers due to their unique physical layer characteristics, including high data rates, low power consumption, and precise localization. Despite their potential, the efficiency of UWB networks remains a significant challenge, preventing the widespread adoption of this technology. As the number of users increases, issues such as low link reliability and reduced network throughput degrade the performance of UWB-based applications. Additionally, UWB-equipped nodes experience high energy consumption when discovering other nodes in large networks. Many UWB-based solutions have adapted conventional techniques from other wireless technologies to enhance network efficiency. However, these approaches have not fully addressed the existing challenges. UWB applications use Collision Avoidance (CA) mechanisms to improve link reliability and throughput. However, these methods are not entirely compatible with the UWB radio standard. Channel hopping for higher throughput may not be feasible in UWB networks that include nodes from different vendors. To reduce energy consumption, UWB applications have relied on low-power radios, such as Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), for neighbor discovery, which requires additional radio interfaces on all UWB nodes. Recent research has also focused on leveraging UWB-specific signal characteristics to enhance efficiency. By analyzing UWB signal properties and receiver behavior, researchers have proposed solutions to improve the throughput of UWB applications through overlapping signals, also known as concurrent transmission. However, these solutions do not yield consistent results across all UWB systems. To improve network efficiency, this work presents solutions to (1) enhance link reliability, (2) increase throughput, and (3) reduce energy consumption in UWB networks. We designed our solutions based on UWB standards (IEEE 802.15.4z and IEEE 802.15.4a), ensuring compatibility with most UWB radio devices. Additionally, our solution is application-agnostic, making it adaptable for a wide range of UWB applications without requiring modifications to the underlying protocol.
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