Performance Comparison of UWB IEEE 802.15.4z and IEEE 802.15.4 in Ranging, Energy Efficiency, and Positioning

Most ultra-wideband (UWB) location systems implement the early UWB IEEE 802.15.4 standard. However, recently, the latest UWB IEEE 802.15.4z standard was introduced. Here, to understand the exact performance of the IEEE 802.15.4z standard and thus provide a valuable reference for UWB-based location systems, we present the first performance comparison of the two standards in ranging and positioning, as well as energy efficiency. All comparisons were carried out in a common environment (a typical indoor office) with the same settings used in a critical performance comparison and analysis. The comparisons include both line-of-sight (LOS) and non-line-of-sight (NLOS) conditions. The experimental results indicate that both standards achieve centimeter-level ranging accuracy in LOS conditions, but IEEE 802.15.4z achieves better performance in NLOS conditions with an average ranging error of less than 0.2 m and thus better performance in positioning than that of IEEE 802.15.4. Moreover, IEEE 802.15.4z achieves approximately three times higher energy efficiency than that of IEEE 802.15.4. Therefore, this work provides a comprehensive overview of a practical performance comparison of IEEE 802.15.4z and IEEE 802.15.4.