Commissariat &#xc0; L'&#xc9;nergie Atomique Et Aux &#xc9;nergies Alternatives

Commissariat a L'energie Atomique

Be Spoon

Xantima LLC

Commissariat a L'engerie Atomique

Laurent Ouvry

Didier Lattard

Gilles Masson

Jean-René Lequepeys

Christophe Boulanger

Bernard Piaget

Didier Varreau

Dominique Noguet

Francois Dehmas

Benoit Denis

Frédéric Hameau

Frederic Hameau

Norbert Daniele

Manuel Pezzin

Charles Fort

Elyes Ben Hamida

Suzanne Lesecq

Mykhailo Zarudniev

Benoît Denis

Olivier Debicki

Sébastien De Rivaz

Venceslass Rat

S&eacute;bastien Leveque

Tien-Tu Vo

Nicolas Mareau

Jérémy Barra

A UWB pulse emitter includes an H-bridge having first and second branches in parallel, a first end common to the branches being connected to a first amplitude control module to regulate a high voltage, a second end common to the branches being connected to a second amplitude control module to regulate a low voltage. A first envelope control module controls the shape of the positive portion of a UWB pulse and a second envelope control module controls the shape of the negative portion of this pulse. Each branch comprises first and second switches for respectively switching the high voltage to a first or second input of the first envelope control module and the low voltage to a first or second output of the second envelope control module. Centre taps of the branches, between which the UWB antenna is connected, connect the outputs and the inputs of the control modules.

Very-low-consumption reconfigurable-waveform compact UWB emitter

A method for measuring, using a radar or sonar, the velocity with respect to the ground of a carrier moving parallel to the ground, includes the following steps: a) orienting the line of sight of the radar or sonar toward the ground; b) emitting a plurality of radar or sonar signals (P-P) that are directed toward the ground, and acquiring respective echo signals (E-E); c) processing the acquired echo signals so as to obtain, for one or more echo delay values, a corresponding Doppler spectrum; d) for the or at least one the echo delay value, determining a high cut-off frequency of the corresponding Doppler spectrum; and e) computing the velocity of the carrier with respect to the ground on the basis of the one or more high cut-off frequencies. A system allowing such a method to be implemented.

Method and system for measuring the velocity of a carrier with respect to the ground

An impulse UWB signal multi-antenna receiver with an RF front-end shared between the various antennas. The receiver includes a code multiplexing stage upstream of the RF front-end, and a code demultiplexing stage downstream of this front-end. The codes used for multiplexing and demultiplexing are orthogonal codes with timing a sub-multiple of the chip timing of the code used at transmission for modulation of the impulse UWB signal.

Multi-antenna impulse UWB receiver

An ultra-wideband pulse generator for radio communication with phase modulation at frequencies of multiple gigahertz comprises an oscillator formed by a pair of intersecting differential branches that have two outputs connected to an LC resonant load. The transmission of a UWB pulse is caused by the application of a supply current to the differential pair over a few nanoseconds. Two current-injecting branches are respectively connected to the outputs S and S'. The control of phase modulation consists in applying an injection current to a single branch to unbalance the differential pair at the start of the generation of the UWB pulse. Depending on the side from which the injection current is applied, the oscillation at the carrier frequency will initiate with one phase or an opposite phase.

Generator of phase-modulated UWB pulses

An ultra-wideband pulse generator, for radio communication at frequencies of 2 to 11 GHz comprises an oscillator providing an output signal at carrier frequency F0 followed by a radiofrequency switching transistor and a control circuit controlling the gate of the transistor to turn it on for duration T corresponding to the desired duration of a UWB pulse. The control circuit is arranged to successively apply, during the same UWB pulse, a first gate voltage turning the transistor on with first internal resistance value for a first part of duration T, a second gate voltage that turns the transistor on with second internal resistance value, different from the first, for a second part of duration T. These internal resistances cause the oscillation to be attenuated differently for duration T of the pulse, allowing the spectrum of the pulse to maintain it within the spectral templates imposed by the radio communication standards.

UWB pulse generator

A UWB impulse receiver including an RF stage followed by a baseband processing stage. The baseband processing stage includes a Rake filter including a plurality of time fingers, each finger including an integrator of the baseband signal during an acquisition window, a control module, and a detection module estimating the received symbols from the integration results. During a synchronization phase, the control module drives respective positions of the acquisition windows associated with the different fingers, to scan at a reception interval, the RF stage only operating, in a course of the synchronization phase, during the plurality of acquisition windows.

Intermittent UWB receiver

A method for positioning a collection of nodes within a wireless sensor network in which each node measures Respective Strength of Signals (RSSs), from its neighboring nodes, and channels linking regular nodes and its neighboring nodes are classified into different categories and are allocated path loss parameters accordingly. Distances separating each regular node from each of its neighboring nodes, and respective variances thereof, are estimated on the basis of the measured RSSs and the allocated path loss parameters. The positions of the regular nodes are then estimated by Weighted Least Square, optimization where the distances to be matched and the variances used for the weighting are those previously estimated.

Channel-type supervised node positioning method for a wireless network

A method for estimating a range between a radio signal emitter and a receiver. A first range estimate is obtained from a signal strength of a received signal and a path loss model with predetermined path loss parameters. This range estimate is further corrected with a systematic bias depending upon an actual finite sensitivity of the receiver. Optionally a corrected variance of the range estimate can be calculated.

Range estimation method based on RSS measurement with limited sensitivity receiver

A robust time shift tracking UWB receiver. After translating in baseband by a quadrature demodulator, the received UWB pulsed signal is integrated on successive time windows, and then sampled. The complex samples are then correlated with a coding sequence from the transmitter and then transmitted on the one hand to a phase estimator and a demodulating/detecting module. The latter estimates the symbol emitted and provides it to the estimator which removes the modulation effect for estimating, at each time-symbol, the phase of the complex samples. A phase rotation follow-up module determines a compensated phase rotation and a non-compensated phase rotation from a reference instant. Controlling means deduce from the non-compensated phase rotation a time offset to be applied to the integration windows.

Robust time shift tracking UWB receiver

A method and a system are provided which are able to utilize indirect paths of signals of UWB type to locate a wireless communication node possessed by a body. The present method and system can notably apply to cooperative body networks implementing several wireless nodes able to communicate with one another.

Method and system for using indirect paths of ultra wideband signals to localize a wireless communication node on a body

A method and a device for cooperative location of a first node possessed by a first mobile body comprising several nodes able to transmit and/or receive a signal by wireless means, comprises a step of measurements of distances separating the first node from second nodes, each of the second nodes being possessed by one of the following entities chosen from among: the first mobile body, a remote fixed apparatus and a second mobile body both situated within transmission range of the said mobile body, at least two nodes from among all the second nodes used to perform the distance measurements being possessed by two entities of distinct types and/or by the second mobile body, a step making it possible to utilize the measurements so as to locate at least the first node at least in relation to some of the second nodes.

Method and apparatus for the cooperative localization of transmitters and/or receivers on a mobile body

A method for determining arrival time of a UWB pulse at a receiver. When a pulse is modulated at an RF frequency, the receiver includes a quadrature demodulator, a first correlating stage for correlating the in-phase signal with the first and second signals of an orthogonal base on a time window and a second correlating stage for correlating the quadrature signal with the first and second signals of the orthogonal base on the same window, a phase estimator estimating the phase of the signal received in the orthogonal base from the correlation results of the first and/or second correlating stage(s), and a computing device determining the arrival time from the phase thus estimated.

Method for determining the arrival time of a UWB pulse and corresponding receiver

A pulsed multi-channel UWB receiver. The receiver includes a first stage translating a received signal into baseband or at an intermediate frequency, a second stage carrying out quadrature mixing on the in-phase and quadrature channels of the first stage, a third stage carrying out an integration on a time window of the signals from the second stage, and a fourth stage carrying out a combination of the integration results from the third stage to provide the real part and the imaginary part of the modulation symbol. The receiver is configurable according to the receiving channel and processing type selected.

Reconfigurable multi-channel UWB receiver

A UWB receiver with time drift correction. After a frequency translation by a quadrature demodulator, a pulsed UWB signal received is integrated on successive time windows, and then sampled. A phase shift estimator determines a phase difference between samples separated by a multiple of the sampling period approaching the period of the pulses of the signal. A controller deduces from this phase difference a time offset to be applied to integrators to synchronize the receiver on the signal received.

UWB receiver with time drift correction

A method for positioning a node within a wireless sensor network in which each node measures RSSs from its neighboring nodes. Path loss parameters of a channel between a regular node and a neighboring node are first obtained. Distances separating each regular node from its neighboring nodes are then estimated on the basis of the measured RSSs, the allocated path loss parameters. Each distance estimate is further corrected by a systematic bias depending upon the actual sensitivity of the receiver. The positions of the regular nodes are estimated from the distance estimates thus corrected.

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Grenoble, France

Laurent Ouvry