A Novel Ranging Method by Code and Multiple Carriers of FHSS Systems

Wan-Jie Cheng
Electrical Engineering National Taiwan University Taipei, Taiwan R99921013@ntu.edu.tw
AbstractThis paper gives a novel idea for two-way range estimation in FHSS (Frequency- Hopping Spread Spectrum) systems. The coarse measurements are obtained by the correlation computations of the PN (Pseudo-Random Noise) code. The fine measurements are obtained by the phase difference computations of a pair of carrier signals. In order to eliminate the integer ambiguities occurred in phase measurements, the frequency difference of these two selected carriers is set to the reciprocal value of the code correlation step time interval. The accuracy can be improved further if several pairs of carriers are weight -averaged according to their SNR (Signal to Noise Ratio). In our simulation, the ranging error of 1500 meters distance measurement is 0.7 meter under the condition of 6dB SNR (Signal Noise Ratio). Keywords-Frequency- Hopping; Ranging; Correlation;

Fan-Ren Chang
Electrical Engineering National Taiwan University Taipei, Taiwan frchang@cc.ee.ntu.edu.tw Since the speed of radio wave is the same as the speed of 8 light ( 3 10 m/sec) , the accuracy of TOF becomes the most important issue. For example, one micro-second error in time is equal to 300 meter error in distance. How to obtain the accurate ranging information in FHSS systems is equivalent to obtain the accurate TOF. In order to improve the accuracy of TOF, phase measurement techniques are widely discussed [3]-[5]. However, the longest measurable distance is restricted by the carrier wavelength. Even with multiple carriers, the measurable distance is still restricted to the frequency difference f [6]. Some FHSS-based ultrasonic ranging approaches are proposed also [6]-[8]. In [6] the accuracy of code correlation is increased by individual carrier since the carrier frequency for ultrasound is low enough, and the measurable distance is short compared to radio frequencies. For outdoor long distance ranging, GPS might be a good choice, but its sometimes unavailable or denied [10]. We propose a ranging method using the wideband FHSS signal on radio frequencies. A specific PN sequence is repeatedly transmitted on different carriers. The ranging method combines the code correlation and the phase measurements. The PN sequence is selected to be larger than the longest measurable distance. The difference of the phase measurements of a pair of carriers is used to improve the ranging accuracy. In order to eliminate integer cycle ambiguities of measured phase information, the frequency difference of the selected pair of carriers should be set to the reciprocal value of the correlation step time interval, which is equal to the integer multiple of the sampling period for code correlaion operations. In this way, the results of code correlation and those of carrier phase measurements can be combined together. The former (code correlation) can increase the measurable distance, and the latter (difference of phases) can improve the ranging accuracy. The outline of this paper is as following. Introduction is given in . The techniques of code correlation and phase measurement are the background which are described in II. The proposed method of integrating both code correlation and phase measurement results is shown in III. Eliminating the cycle ambiguities is derived in detail in this section. Furthermore, the weighted average approach is investigated when more than one carrier pairs are adopted. The simulation results of several different scenario are shown in IV. Finally, the conclusions are summarized in V.

I.

INTRODUCTION

Positioning in mobile communication is becoming more and more important. The applications include emergency calls, mobile advertising, asset tracking and fleet managements [1]. There are many methods for positioning. Triangulation is one of the well-known approaches. No doubt to say, ranging is the key techniques for triangulation. We will propose a novel ranging method to solve the twoway ranging problems in FHSS communication systems. There are many benefits of multi-carrier modulations already, such as frequency diversity against narrow band jamming and immunity to the near-far problem. We think the accurate ranging function might be a new advantage of FHSS systems. Of many ranging techniques, direct sequence correlation is commonly used to estimate the time of flight (TOF) [2] in signal propagation. In a two-way ranging system, one transceiver serves as the originator and the other serves as the responder [9][10]. A round-trip delay is calculated inside the originator. The time interval measurement of the signal travelling using the same clock in the originator will keep away the time synchronization problems occurred in different clocks [11]. The circuit latency inside the transceivers in not considered in this paper. They should be greatly eliminated by large amount of systematic real work experiments. The TOF of the one-way delay is the result of dividing the TOF of the round-trip delay by 2. Then, the distance between the originator and the responder is the product of the speed of radio wave and the one-way TOF.

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II.

CODE CORREALTION AND PHASE MEASUREMENT

and

The technique of ranging is equivalent to measuring the signal propagation delay, also called time of flight (TOF). We can obtain the information of TOF from code correlation and phase measurement. A. Code correlation In this paper, code correlation is implemented with pseudo-random noise (PN) sequences [12]. Among the PN sequences, m-sequence is commonly used and we employ it in our simulation. The auto-correlation of PN sequences is around zero when misaligned and peaks when well aligned, as in Fig. 1. We choose the first peak as the rough TOF. When the peak appears in the N-th correlation point, the rough TOF is NTc , where Tc is the correlation step time. B. Phase measurement When a signal carried by a single frequency propagates twice the distance between two transceivers and returns back to the originator, there is a phase shift caused by the roundtrip delay, that is, the TOF . The received signal of the originator is

Q = A s (t ) sin(2 f )dt
T

(3)

where T is the integral period. Dividing (3) by (2), we obtain

Q I

s(t ) cos(2 f )dt

T

s(t ) sin(2 f )dt

(4)

sin(2 f ) s (t )dt

cos(2 f ) s (t )dt

= tan(2 f ),

2 f = n +

Q => = arctan( ), I

r (t ) = As (t ) cos(2 f (t ))
where s (t ) is the transmitted PN sequence, f is the carrier

(1)

, , n = 1, 2,3,... 2 2

(5)

frequency, and A is the amplitude. We use BPSK to modulate the carrier, so s (t ) has two values 1 and -1. To obtain the phase shift 2 f , the received signal is compared with the local oscillator. Fig. 2 shows the phase detection block. The output of I and Q channel lowpass filters and integrators are:

where is the phase shift that can be measured and n is the integer ambiguity of the half carrier cycle. We have no idea about the value of n, so what we can utilize is . III. ACCURACY IMPROVEMENT We proposed to use the phase difference of a pair of carriers to refine the PN sequence correlation results. A specific PN sequence is repeatedly transmitted with different carriers using FHSS.

I = A s (t ) cos(2 f )dt
T

(2)

Figure 2. Phase detection of the originator.

Figure 1. Auto-correlation of a specific PN sequence.

For simple illustration, we select two carriers with their frequency difference denoted as f . Most importantly, the correlation step Tc should be set to the reciprocal of f :

Tc =

1 f

1 f m fn

, fm > fn

(6)

where [ f m , f n ] is the carrier pair we exploit to refine the correlation results. The concept of refinement is shown in Fig. 3. When the peak appears in the N-th correlation point, the true TOF should be between NTc 0.5Tc . Later, We the fractional part within [ 0.5Tc , 0.5Tc ] . Its feasible to have the parameter setting as (6). Since the carrier difference f is always several mega Hz, which is achievable for the sampling frequency of correlation. For the following contents of this section, we will describe how the parameter setting in (6) improves the accuracy in subsection A. Then the weighted average for the measurements of multiple pairs of carriers is depicted in B. A. Accuracy improvement by single carrier pair When the correlation result shows that the peak occurs in the N-th sample, we write the round-trip TOF as: use the phase difference between f m and f n to estimate

Figure 3. Using the phase difference to correct the correlation result.

where m and n are measured phase shifts of the two carriers, and nm and nn (nm >nn , since f m > f n ) are integer ambiguities of the half carrier cycle that we dont know. Subtract (9) from (8), we obtain:

2 ( NTc + f )f = + ( nm nn )
1

(10)

where = m n . Replace f by Tc in (6) and divide the equation by , we obtain:

= NTc + f ,

0.5Tc f < 0.5Tc .

(7)

2N +

2 f Tc

(6) + (nm nn ).

Our goal in this subsection is to calculate f . For two selected carriers f m and f n , we also know the relations between the measured phases and the TOF in (5) and (7):

(11)

From the boundaries of f , m , and n in (7) ~ (9), we have:

2 f m = m + nm => 2 f m ( NTc + f ) = m + nm , 1 m 1 , 2 2

2 f Tc

< 1, 1

1.

(12)

(8) Then from (11) and (12), we know that:

2 f n f = n + nn => 2 f n ( NTc + f ) = n + nn , 1 n 1 2 2

(9)

2 f Tc 2 f Tc

2 f Tc = =

, +

if f > 0.

+1 = 1 =

, if f > 0 and < 0. , if f < 0 and > 0.

(13)

Hence we know that f can be calculated from , and the remaining thing we need to do is to inspect the sign of f . In our method, we place two correlators, one leading

and one lagging relative to the peak by 0.5Tc [2]. The results of the two correlators show whether f [ 0, 0.5Tc ] or f [ 0.5Tc , 0] , as shown in Fig. 4(a). If the Late correlation (L) is larger than the Early correlation (E), we judge f [ 0, 0.5Tc ] , as Fig. 4(b), else

f [ 0.5Tc , 0] , as Fig. 4(c).

After inspecting the sign of the fractional part of TOF f , it can be calculated from (13) without nm and nn
Figure 5. 7 hopping carriers with spacing of 1 MHz.

f = 2f , + , f = 2f , f = 2f

if f > 0. if f > 0 and < 0. if f < 0 and > 0.

be 3 MHz. Under this situation, we can select the carrier pairs [ f1 , f 4 ] , [ f 2 , f5 ] , [ f3 , f6 ] , and [ f 4 , f7 ] , with (14) correlation step of 1/3 s . After a complete round of hopping, we collect 1 to 7 and obtain 4 values of : 1

= 4 1 , 2 = 5 2 , 3 = 6 3 , and 4 = 7 4 . According to the

B. Weighted average of multiple carrier pairs In the above work, we verified how a carrier pair [ f m , f n ] helps the refinement of the correlation results. In a FHSS system, there are also other pairs that satisfy the same carrier difference f . For simple illustration, assuming there are 7 carriers with spacing of 1 MHz, as in fig. 5, and we want to choose the carrier difference f to

method introduced in A, four values of the TOF fractional part, f ,1 ~ f ,4 is calculated. We utilize an weighted

average algorithm to obtain the estimation f :

f = wi f ,i .
i =1

(15)

The weights are inversely proportional to the corresponding measurement variances of each phase difference of comes from two phase measurements. For example, since 1 = 4 1 , the variance of 1 is:
2 1 = 21 + 24 .

2 2 ~
1

. From the previous method, the variance

(16)

In our system, the phase variance comes from the existence of additive white Gaussian Noise (AWGN) n(t ) , and according to [13], the AWGN can be expressed as :
n (t ) = nI cos(2 ft ) nQ sin(2 ft ) where (17)

nI and nQ are the envelopes with Gaussian

r (t ) = As (t ) cos(2 f (t )) + n(t )
(18)

distribution. so the previous equation (1) and (4) become:

Figure 4. The result of TOF fractional part judged by early-late correlators.

Q I

A s(t ) sin(2 f )dt + nQ dt A s(t ) cos(2 f )dt + nI dt

T T T T

TABLE I. Carrier Difference

CARRIER PAIRS FOR EACH CARRIER DIFFERENCE

Carrier pairs

(19)

= arctan( ).
I

6 MHz 12 MHz

According to [13], the phase variance 1

2

~ 27 is inverse

proportional to the SNR value at the input to the phase detector when it is larger than 8 dB:

24 MHz

[ 700MHz, 706MHz ] , [ 703MHz, 709MHz ] , , [ 781MHz, 787MHz ] , [ 784MHz, 790MHz ] [ 700MHz, 712MHz ] , [ 703MHz, 715MHz ] , , [ 775MHz, 787MHz ] , [ 778MHz, 790MHz ] [ 700MHz, 724MHz ] , [ 703MHz, 727MHz ] , , [ 763MHz, 787MHz ] , [ 766MHz, 790MHz ]

2i 1

SNRi

(20)

These error of phase measurements satisfy zero biased distribution. Therefore, the weights are computed as:
2 2 wi = i 1 / i 1.
i =1

(21)

After the final estimation calculated as IV. speed of the radio wave.

, the one way distance is

( NTc + f ) / 2 c , where c is the propagation

SIMULATION RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Figure 6. Estimated distance error versus carrier difference at distance 500 m. TABLE II. Distance (meter) SNR(dB) Ranging Error (meter) RANGING ACCURACY VERSUS DISTANCE 300 19.2 0.0718 500 15 0.2215 800 10.7 0.3068 1000 8.75 0.5731 1500 6 0.7023

In our simulation, we set the first carrier in 700 MHz, with 31 hopping carriers and spacing of 3MHz. All available carriers are listed below:

700, 703, 706, 709, ... 787, 790 (MHz).

The channel are modeled with Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN), random narrowband interference, and Friis path loss [14]. The PN sequence is a 31-bit long m-sequence, with bit (chip) rate of 3M bps, thus the maximum distance that can be measured within one sequence length 6 8 is 1 10 31 3 10 2 = 1550 (meter) . 3 First, we analyze the performance of frequency difference f of 6MHz, 12MHz, and 24MHz. The carrier pairs are specified in table I. The distance and average SNR value is set at 500 m and 15dB. The results is plotted in Fig. 6. It shows that larger f gives smaller ranging errors since the TOF error can be expressed from (14) as:

f =

. 2f

Its reasonable to obtain better accuracy at larger frequency difference because the correlation step narrows down according to (6), which brings higher resolution. Besides, we have introduced in (16) - (20) that is related to the SNR value of its corresponding carriers. In addition, the ranging accuracy is also dependent of the measured distance. Since the SNR will decrease as the length becomes longer and longer. Under the scenario of 23 carriers, the frequency difference of each carrier pair being (22) 12 MHz, the ranging accuracy with respect to distance is shown in Table II. Remember that we just model the channel with AWGN and random narrow band interference. The real situation should be more complicated with the existence of multipath and mobility. The result shows that the ranging

error increases as the distance increases. We can solve this problem by automatic gain control over transmission power when the distance becomes too large. But to be more sophisticated, we can increase the integral period T in (4) to increase the number of sampling point before phase shift detection. We prefer the latter signal processing method to roughly increasing the transmission power.

[8]

[9]

[10]

V.

CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE WORK

[11] [12]

We proposed an idea of utilizing multiple carriers to aid the accuracy of correlation. The search of integer cycles of the phase detection is not required, which avoids a lot of exhausting efforts. In addition, the method doesnt totally rely on very fine correlation resolution to achieve good ranging accuracy. This can reduce the time and memory spent for correlation, with complexity O(n2) for n points. For example, when f is 12 MHz, the correlation step Tc is 1/12 s according to (6). However, the accuracy can be improved to 0.7 meter, which is better than the resolution of Tc (25 meter). The simulation results show that more carrier numbers and larger carrier difference can reach better accuracy. We successfully combine code correlation and carrier phase to measure long distances while keep the accuracy reasonably fine. As the long-distance and fine ranging ability is still insufficient in current communication systems, this proposed system provides a novel idea to add such extra benefit. In some GPS-denied situation, it can be applied on many aspects, including emergency calls, mobile advertising, asset tracking and fleet managements. For our future work, we will focus on the following issues: Employing fast computation (such as FFT) on code correlation to reduce the computational complexity, hardware circuit latency analysis, and the triangulation positioning scenario based on this ranging method. VI.
[1]

[13]

[14]

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