Toward UWB Impulse Radio Sensing: Fundamentals, Potentials, and Challenges

Radio sensing is a rapidly emerging research field. It focuses on designing an integrated communication system that can also perform localization and radar functionalities sharing the same transmit signals and potentially the same hardware. Ultra-wideband (UWB) impulse radio is a promising technology for radio sensing because it offers a high-range resolution and direct access to the channel impulse response (CIR) to observe the multipath components (MPCs) of the wideband channel caused by scattering at target objects. This approach enables a wide range of functionalities and applications, especially in the field of mobility and transportation. The foundation is given by the signal propagation and channel modeling of the UWB channel, which is briefly revisited in this chapter. Based on the CIR and estimated MPCs the target object can be localized like a multistatic passive radar. The influence of geometry in a passive target localization system is studied by calculating the geometric dilution of precision (GDOP). In addition to passive localization more tasks and functionalities of radio sensing, are briefly introduced including detection, tracking, imaging, counting, and classification. The chapter concludes with further research directions and challenges in UWB radio sensing, especially for real-world use in the context of mobility applications