UWB-Assisted High-Precision Positioning in a UTM Prototype

Abstract

A high-precision positioning prototype suitable for the Unmanned Aircraft System Traffic Management (UTM) system is proposed. Comprised of Global Positioning System (GPS), Ultra-wideband (UWB), and Long Range (LoRa) WAN capabilities, our prototype effectively improves GPS accuracy by utilizing high-precision UWB distance measurement. A set of calibration procedures can reduce the error of UWB distance measurement within 10cm accuracy. Moreover, a novel cost function is proposed so that the longitude, latitude, and relative height errors of GPS can be effectively improved, with relative altitude error reduced from 4. 03m to 1. 74m in particular. Finally, our UWB-assisted positioning prototype significantly enhances GPS localization accuracy. The outdoor relative position error between devices under test (DUTs) can be reduced from 6 m to within 10 cm.