Nxp B.v.

Nxp Usa, Inc.

Manuel Lafer

Wolfgang Küchler

Thomas Baier

Stefan Tertinek

Michael Schober

Salvatore Drago

Pablo Corbalán Pelegrín

Gert Holler

Aspects of the present disclosure are directed to communicating data for authentication and location determination, such as for authenticating a key FOB and locating the key FOB within a defined distance. As may be implemented in accordance with one or more embodiments, a plurality of headerless packets, respectively including scrambled timestamp sequence (STS) packets but not including encoding and/or synchronization headers, are communicated between respective communication circuits. A time of flight (TOF) value indicative of time elapsed between transmission and reception of the plurality of headerless packets is assessed based on the STS packets. A distance between the communication circuits is determined based on the assessed time of flight.

Distance assessment with headerless packets

A transceiver configured to: determine a reference frequency offset relative to a second transceiver based on double sided ranging; correct first and second portions of a packet received from a respective first and second antenna; and determine an angle of arrival of the packet based on corrected first and second portions and the reference frequency offset.

Transceiver

In accordance with a first aspect of the present disclosure, a communication device is provided, comprising: at least two antennas; an ultra-wideband (UWB) communication unit configured to receive UWB frames through said antennas; a controller configured to switch between said antennas such that consecutive UWB frames are received through different ones of said antennas; wherein the controller is further configured to compute channel impulse responses (CIRs) wherein each of said CIRs is based on a different one of said UWB frames. In accordance with a second aspect of the present disclosure, a corresponding method of operating a communication device is conceived. In accordance with a third aspect of the present disclosure, a computer program is provided for carrying out said method.

Communication device and operating method

A receiver comprising: a processing module configured to: receive a first portion of a packet of received signalling from a first antenna; receive a carrier estimate signal; adjust the first portion based on the carrier estimate signal and correlate the signal with an expected code sequence to provide a first correlated signal; a tracking module configured to: receive the first correlated signal and update the carrier estimate signal, wherein the processing module is further configured to: receive a second portion of the packet from a second antenna; adjust the second portion based on the carrier estimate signal and correlate the signal to provide a second correlated signal, and wherein the receive path further comprises a phase calculation module configured to: receive the first and second correlated signals and determine a respective first and second carrier phase and an angle of arrival of the received signalling.

Receive path

A communication device and method include a reconfigurable receiver that is reconfigurable between communication, ranging and radar modes. The reconfigurable receiver includes a mixer configured to mix digital samples with a carrier phase estimate signal and configured to generate in-phase digital samples based on the carrier phase estimate. The reconfigurable receiver further includes a symbol correlator configured to correlate against the in-phase digital samples and generate correlated data, and a symbol binning unit configured to bin the correlated data and generate a first order channel impulse response estimate. The reconfigurable receiver yet further includes a multiplexer configured to switch the digital samples to the symbol binning unit when the reconfigurable receiver is configured in radar mode and to switch the correlated data to the symbol binning unit when the reconfigurable receiver is configured in a ranging mode.

Impulse-radio receiver and method

A processing module for a receiver device. The processor module comprises a channel estimate generation component arranged to output channel estimate information for a received signal, and a timestamping module arranged to determine a ToA measurement for a marker within a packet of the received signal based at least partly on the channel estimate information for the received signal generated by the channel estimate generation component. The channel estimate generation component comprises a validation component arranged to derive a validation pattern for the packet within the received signal for which a ToA measurement is to be determined, identify a section of the packet containing a validation sequence, and perform cross-correlation between at least a part of the validation sequence within the packet and at least a part of the validation pattern to generate channel estimate validation information.

Growing community of inventors

Graz, Austria

Manuel Lafer