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WakeLoc: An Ultra-Low Power, Accurate and Scalable On-Demand RTLS using Wake-Up Radios

Silvano Cortesi, Christian Vogt, Michele Magno

TL;DR

WakeLoc addresses the need for infrastructure-free, energy-efficient RTLS in extreme environments by combining ultra-wideband localization with ultra-low-power wake-up radios. It enables on-demand localization through active and passive modes, achieving centimeter-scale 2D accuracy while dramatically reducing anchor power consumption. Real-world experiments and simulations show WakeLoc can operate on coin-cell power for years with a small number of tags, and scale toward large deployments with substantial energy savings over FlexTDOA and AP-TWR baselines. The approach offers a practical, scalable solution for precise, low-power localization in space and other resource-constrained settings.

Abstract

For future large scale robotic moon missions, the availability of infrastructure-less, cheap and low power real-time locating systems (RTLSs) is critical. Traditional RTLS face significant trade-offs between power consumption and localization latency, often requiring anchors to be connected to the power grid or sacrificing speed for energy efficiency. This paper proposes WakeLoc, an on-demand RTLS based on ultra-wideband (UWB), enabling both low-latency and ultra-low power consumption by leveraging UWB wake-up radios (WuRs). In WakeLoc, tags independently start a localization procedure by sending a wake-up call (WuC) to anchors, before performing the actual localization. Distributed tags equipped with WuRs listen to the WuC and use passive listening of the UWB messages to determine their own position. Experimental measurements demonstrate that the localization accuracy in a 2D setup achieves less than 12.9cm error, both for the active and the passive tag. Additional power simulations based on real-world measurements were performed in a realistic environment, showing that anchors can achieve a power consumption as low as 15.53μW while the RTLS performs one on-demand localization per minute for 5 tags, thus operate up to 5.01 years on a single coin cell battery (690mWh).

WakeLoc: An Ultra-Low Power, Accurate and Scalable On-Demand RTLS using Wake-Up Radios

TL;DR

WakeLoc addresses the need for infrastructure-free, energy-efficient RTLS in extreme environments by combining ultra-wideband localization with ultra-low-power wake-up radios. It enables on-demand localization through active and passive modes, achieving centimeter-scale 2D accuracy while dramatically reducing anchor power consumption. Real-world experiments and simulations show WakeLoc can operate on coin-cell power for years with a small number of tags, and scale toward large deployments with substantial energy savings over FlexTDOA and AP-TWR baselines. The approach offers a practical, scalable solution for precise, low-power localization in space and other resource-constrained settings.

Abstract

For future large scale robotic moon missions, the availability of infrastructure-less, cheap and low power real-time locating systems (RTLSs) is critical. Traditional RTLS face significant trade-offs between power consumption and localization latency, often requiring anchors to be connected to the power grid or sacrificing speed for energy efficiency. This paper proposes WakeLoc, an on-demand RTLS based on ultra-wideband (UWB), enabling both low-latency and ultra-low power consumption by leveraging UWB wake-up radios (WuRs). In WakeLoc, tags independently start a localization procedure by sending a wake-up call (WuC) to anchors, before performing the actual localization. Distributed tags equipped with WuRs listen to the WuC and use passive listening of the UWB messages to determine their own position. Experimental measurements demonstrate that the localization accuracy in a 2D setup achieves less than 12.9cm error, both for the active and the passive tag. Additional power simulations based on real-world measurements were performed in a realistic environment, showing that anchors can achieve a power consumption as low as 15.53μW while the RTLS performs one on-demand localization per minute for 5 tags, thus operate up to 5.01 years on a single coin cell battery (690mWh).
Paper Structure (18 sections, 3 figures, 4 tables)

This paper contains 18 sections, 3 figures, 4 tables.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Related Works
  3. UWB Localization
  4. Wake-up Radio Receiver
  5. WakeLoc
  6. Active-mode
  7. Passive-mode
  8. Performance evaluation setup
  9. Node Hardware and Firmware
  10. Real-world setup
  11. Simulation
  12. Node model
  13. Environment models
  14. Results
  15. Localization Accuracy Characterization
  16. ...and 3 more sections

Figures (3)

  • Figure 1: WakeLoc localization scheme, combining both activeAP-TWR and FlexTDOA
  • Figure 2: Experimental setup for the estimation accuracy evaluation. $A$ marks anchors, $V$ cameras of the Vicon system. The tags $T$ were placed at different locations in the grid.
  • Figure 3: Power simulation. Blue line marks the consumption of FlexTDOA (independent on number of tags); Red, green and orange mark the consumption of WakeLoc in dependence of the localization period, number of tags and their positions. Fig. (a) shows the average consumption of any individual anchors. Fig. (b) shows the average consumption of an individual tag (including both active and passive localizations).