TOA Positioning for a TDMA Localization System

Positioning with one single communication between base stations and user devices can effectively save air time and thus expand the user volume to infinite. However, this usually demands accurate synchronization between base stations. Wireless synchronization between base stations can simplify the deployment of the positioning system but requires accurate clock offset estimation between base stations. A time division multiple access (TDMA) localization system in which user devices only receive signals from base stations to generate time of arrival (TOA) measurements to position themselves and no cables are needed to interconnect base stations for clock synchronization is proposed, implemented and tested. In this system, the user devices can easily join in or exit without influence to other users and the update rate of each user can be easily adjusted independently according to its specific requirement.