Impact of CIR processing for UWB radar distance estimation with the DW1000 transceiver

Automatic distance detection is essential for industrial safety processes, allowing detection of persons in unsafe zones, detecting obstacles nearby autonomous vehicles, etc. ultr-awideband (UWB) radar is a recent upcoming technology that is suitable for low-cost, device-free distance estimations to persons and obstacles. The excellent time properties of UWB allow the detection of distinct propagation paths from sender to receiver and reflecting objects. Currently, existing work utilizes dedicated UWB radar hardware. This paper focuses on off-the-shelf DW1000 UWB transceivers which have lower cost but also lower time resolution of the received channel impulse response (CIR). We analyze three data processing methods (ICIR, UCIR, and ACIR). Next, we analyze two distance estimation approaches in a realistic industrial environment: a mean based and a variance based. We demonstrate that selecting the best combination of data processing and distance estimator is crucial, allowing the detection of metal objects up to 900 cm with a mean accuracy of 9 cm, or the detection of persons with a mean absolute error of only 44 cm.