Fast and Accurate Tracking in Wireless Networks

Wireless tracking is being increasingly used in elite and professional sports for training and performance monitoring. Accurate and high update rate tracking in indoor venues is the challenge that we are addressing. In this paper we propose a new algorithm for network round-trip ranging based on the measurement of time of arrival that supports high update rates and tracks and removes errors caused by changes in propagation delay in the analog electronics. The localization performance of our proposed algorithm is validated by results acquired in a sporting venue using our localization system, which is based on a custom TDMA protocol. We then discuss the issues with implementing the scheme in an 802.11 wireless network, propose an extension to the standard to support our scheme, and present analysis and simulation results to demonstrate the benefit over other schemes.