The Architecture Design and Hardware Implementation of Communications and High-Precision Positioning System

Within the near future, a vast demand for autonomous vehicular techniques can be forecast on both aviation and ground platforms, including autonomous driving, automatic landing, air traffic management. These techniques usually rely on the positioning system and the communication system independently, where it potentially causes spectrum congestion. Inspired by the spectrum sharing technique, Communications and High-Precision Positioning (CHP2) system is invented to provide a high precision position service (precision ~1cm) while performing the communication task simultaneously under the same spectrum. CHP2 system is implemented on the consumer-off-the-shelf (COTS) software-defined radio (SDR) platform with customized hardware. Taking the advantages of the SDR platform, the completed baseband processing chain, time-of-arrival estimation (ToA), time-of-flight estimation (ToF) are mathematically modeled and then implemented onto the system-on-chip (SoC) system. Due to the compact size and cost economy, the CHP2 system can be installed on different aerial or ground platforms enabling a high-mobile and reconfigurable network.

In this dissertation report, the implementation procedure of the CHP2 system is discussed in detail. It mainly focuses on the system construction on the Xilinx Ultrascale+ SoC platform. The CHP2 waveform design, ToA solution, and timing exchanging algorithms are also introduced. Finally, several in-lab tests and over-the-air demonstrations are conducted. The demonstration shows the best ranging performance achieves the ~1 cm standard deviation and 10Hz refreshing rate of estimation by using a 10MHz narrow-band signal over 915MHz (US ISM) or 783MHz (EU Licensed) carrier frequency.