Infrastructure-less localisation is critical for many indoor/outdoor applications such as UAV/UGV formation, autonomous cooperation and control in tracking firefighters, where the operational environment is GNSS challenged, e.g. in a forested area or indoor area like an airport. We develop ultra wideband impulse radio (UWB-IR) based cooperative positioning units. The ultra-wideband in UWB results in well separated direct path form the multi-paths enabling more accurate ranging measurement. The peer to peer range can be exchanged among units for collaborative positioning.

Our system consists of hardware module (Decawave DWM1000 module), firmware module (MAC, ranging and data transmission), network module (network topology manager, network time synchronisation), and positioning module (algorithm for relative positioning, UWB+IMU sensor fusion)

• Ranging/positioning accuracy within 10cm/30cm
• Max. range is 200m in open area
• 3ms for one peer-to-peer ranging
• In case of 5 nodes, positioning speed is about 10Hz including 30ms for 10 pairs of p2p ranging and localising them