Adaptive Internode Ranging for Coherent Distributed Antenna Arrays

Abstract

An adaptive ranging technique for maintaining high-accuracy ranging between nodes in coherent distributed antenna arrays is presented. Coherent distributed antenna arrays are networks of wireless systems coordinated coherently at the level of the wavelength of the wireless signal. Enabling coherent operation between separate mobile nodes for active and passive microwave remote sensing requires accurate knowledge of the relative positions of the nodes in the array. In this article, a novel adaptive ranging technique based on the near-optimal waveform for high-accuracy ranging, a two-tone waveform, is designed and demonstrated in software-defined radio platforms representing array nodes. Ranging accuracy is dependent on both signal-to-noise ratio and the separation of the two tones in the waveform; however, in realistic environments, factors such as attenuation or antenna misalignment are not easily predicted, which can lead to degradation of the ranging measurement. Selecting one appropriate waveform for range measurements is, thus, not feasible unless the bandwidth assigned to it is always higher than required for the needed range accuracy. Rather than allocating such an unnecessarily wide bandwidth, this article presents a controller that regulates the spectral resources adaptively to meet the desired reference accuracy while minimizing the total occupied bandwidth. The controller continuously monitors the statistical parameters of the received signal, such as signal-to-noise ratio, in a perception stage and adapts the spectral characteristics of the transmitted waveform in an action stage. The adaptive action, based on a Cramer–Rao lower bound analysis, maintains the signal statistical characteristics below a specified bound to maintain high coherent gain. Experimental results demonstrate the ability to maintain ranging standard deviation of 1.5 mm (standard deviation of time delay estimates equals $10^{-11}$ s), which yields 90% or more of the possible achievable coherent gain at carrier frequencies up to 13.33 GHz.