A Model on Indoor Localization System Based on the Time Difference Without Synchronization

Localization has emerged as an attractive solution to enable new business models that rely on location-based services in wireless networks for communication, sensing, and control. In particular, time difference-of-arrival (TDOA) is one of the widely used localization models. However, the conventional TDOA requires precise time synchronization between a target node and anchor nodes for measuring the time difference, which leads to a large number of packets for communication. To reduce packet transmission, we propose a model for measuring the time difference without time synchronization called ASync-TDOA. Different from the conventional model, ASync-TDOA can measure the time difference in a one-way-based ranging by introducing the reference node. Specifically, the time difference between the target node and anchor nodes can be directly measured by the server based on the timestamps from the reference node. After that, the target node is accurately located using least squares and brute force for the time difference. We implement the ASync-TDOA model on a localization system with ultra-wideband signals to estimate the localization of the target node, which is easy to operate in practical engineering. The experiments show that the proposed ASync-TDOA is efficient in reducing the packet transmissions and improving the TDOA measurement and localization precision.