Evaluation of UWB Transmissions in Highly Reflective Environments

UWB transmissions based on the IEEE 802.15.4 standard have the advantage of robustness and high immunity to multipath fading. As such, the scientific community considers UWB suitable for communications in highly reflective environments. This paper aims to evaluate the feasibility and performance of a UWB-based wireless communications link inside a satellite mockup. Two types of applications are envisaged: wireless positioning (implemented with the Decawave MDEK1001 development kit and evaluated in terms of positioning error) and data transfer (implemented with CDS VN360 UWB radio modules and evaluated in terms of packet transmission success rate). The test results highlight the impact of the environment on the performance of the two types of applications. While the UWB technology is able to overcome the shortcomings of multiple reflections and provide a reliable data transfer in such environments, the positioning accuracy is degraded if the algorithm is based on time of flight.