Humatics P412 A User Manual

User’s Manual and Data

Sheet

PulsON® 412

DRAFT Final Version available Jan 31, 2013

Nov 2012

TIME DOMAIN

Cummings Research Park
4955 Corporate Drive Suite 101
Huntsville, AL 35805 USA

http://www.timedomain.com

Tel: [phone]
+1 888.826.8378
Fax: [phone]

®

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Copyright

All rights reserved. Time Domain® 2001-2012. All rights reserved.

Trademarks

Time Domain®, PulsON®, and “PulsON Triangle” logo are registered trademarks of Time Domain. Microsoft® and

Windows XP®, Windows Vista®, and Windows 7® are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. Any trademarks,
trade names, service marks or service names owned or registered by any other company and used in this manual are the
property of its respective company.

Rights

Rights to use this documentation are set forth in the PulsON Products Terms and Conditions of Sale.

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Overview

This document is the user’s manual and data sheet for the Time Domain PulsON 412 (“P412”) Ultra
Wideband (UWB) ranging radio transceiver. The document is divided into the following sections.

Section 1 Summary and Theory of Operation
Section 2 Using a P412 as a Ranging Radio
Section 3 Hardware Block Diagram
Section 4 Interfaces
Section 5 Mechanical
Section 6 Performance Specs
Section 7 Broadspec Antenna
Section 8 FCC Compliance
Section 9 Export Restrictions

1 Summary and Theory of Operation

The P412 is an Ultra Wideband (UWB) radio transceiver that provides the following functions:

• It accurately and reliably measures the distance between two P412s and provides these

measurements at a high update rate.

• It supports two different range measurement techniques (Two-Way Time-of-Flight and

Coarse Range Estimation).

• It communicates data between two or more P412s.

Time Domain’s PulsON P412 is a ruggedized, industrial UWB platform. The most obvious and
important characteristics of the device relative to industrial operation are listed below:

• The electrical interface to the unit through USB, Serial or CAN

• All components are rated for industrial temperature (-40C to +85C)

• Fan is not required for cooling.

• For best performance, the user must provide a heat sink to insure that the unit does not

overheat

• The board is provided with nine large (#6) mounting holes that insure that the unit will

survive and operate in most high vibration environments

• RF filtering provides superior operation in the presence of 2.4GHz and 5.8GHz

• The UWB emissions have been tested and comply with FCC 15.519 which is the most

stringent of the FCC UWB limits

• The digital emissions have been tested and comply with the FCC 15.109(b) (“Class A digital

device”) which limits use of the P412 to commercial and industrial uses only

The P412 is an Ultra Wideband radio that coherently transmits and receives trains of individual RF
pulses at a nominal rate of 10 MHz. Figure 1 provides a notional example of a typical UWB pulse
in both the time and frequency domain. Pulses are transmitted as coded trains of pulses. Coding is
accomplished either by pseudo-randomly shifting the pulse phase or inter pulse transmission time.
By transmitting and receiving pulses coherently, the P412 can integrate multiple pulses and thereby
increase the received signal to noise ratio. Integration can therefore be used to increase robustness
and or operational range.

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Figure 1: Notional UWB pulse in both time and frequency domain.

The P412 measures distance using a technique called Two Way Time of Flight. In this approach the
radio requesting the range measurement (the Requestor) will transmit a packet of pulses that will be
received by one or more units (the Responders). The responder will then measure the leading edge
of the waveform relative to the radio lock spot and transmit this information in a return (or
responding) packet. The Requestor will then measure the difference in phase between the transmitted
and received PN code and compensate this phase measurement by the leading edge measurement.
Dividing the result by two and multiplying by the speed of light yields a measurement of the distance
between the Requestor and Responder.

The user controls and monitors the P412 through a straight forward Application Programming
Interface (API) over USB, Serial or CAN connections. USB driver support is provided for Vista 32,
Vista 64, Win7 32 and Win7 64 operating systems. The API provides all the commands and
capabilities required by a user to design a network tailored for operating multiple P412s as ranging
radios. For details on the API see the following document:

• Ranging and Communications Module API Specification

For details on the USB and serial interfaces refer to

• USB and Serial Interfaces

To assist the user in demonstrating the performance of the P412 as a ranging radio, Time Domain also
provides a PC based Graphical User Interface (GUI). These GUI allows the user to exercise all of the
API commands and offers the following capabilities:

• They provide programmers with a visual example of a host application which interfaces to

the P412 through the API.

• They allow users to evaluate ranging and communications performance.

• They allow system analysts to visualize, collect and log raw ranging data such that it is

possible to develop algorithms/strategies tailored to a given application
Time Domain also provides sample C and Matlab for demonstrating the interface and performance of
the hardware.

For details on these GUIs refer to the following document:

• Ranging and Communications Module Reconfiguration and Evaluation Tool (RCM –

RET) User Guide

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Additional information including all of the documents referenced in this section can be found on the
web at www.timedomain.com. This includes: the API, software manuals, applications notes, white
papers, examples, published papers, sample C code, sample Matlab, etc.

2 Using a P412 as a Ranging Radio

The P412, shown in Figure 2, is a small, low power and affordable device which provides accurate,
high rate range measurements and has superior operational performance when compared to
conventional RFID/RTLS devices. The device is intended for use as an OEM module. When used as
a ranging radio it is typically referred to as a P412 RCM.

Fig. 2: P412 RCM with Broadspec antenna

Time Domain does not provide a standard network as part of the API. Instead, Time Domain is
focused on providing a robust platform and a full featured, flexible interface. This focus includes all
aspects of the physical and link layers as well as a few additional mechanisms to support
implementation of a wide variety of network architectures. A block diagram showing operation of a
ranging system is provided in Figure 3.

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Fig. 3: Illustration of the interface with a system of P412 RCMs

Key Features of the P412 RCM

• Excellent performance in high multipath and high clutter environments

• Coherent signal processing extends operating range

• Direct sequential pulse sampling allows measurement of received waveform (resultant

waveform is available to the user for ranging optimization)

• Two-Way Time-of-Flight (TW-TOF) ranging technique provides highly precise range

measurements with industry-leading update rate

• Coarse Range Estimation (CRE) technique estimates the range from a transmitting unit by

using the received leading edge signal strength and periodically recalibrating the estimate

based on infrequent TW-TOF range measurements

• UWB chipset enables low cost, small size, and low power operation

• UWB waveform and pseudo random encoding ensures noise-like transmissions with a very

small RF footprint

• RF emissions compliant with FCC limits

• Each unit is a full transceiver

• Single 3.1”x 3.7” (7.9 x 9.4 cm) board

• USB or Serial interfaces or CAN

• Several sleep modes allow user to reduce power consumption

Typical Applications of the P412 RCM

• Peer-to-peer ranging with moderate-rate wireless communications

• GPS augmentation for multipath resistance

• Inertial augmentation for drift removal

• Robotics navigation and tracking, precision formation

• Autonomous vehicle convoys

• First responder tracking and man-down locator

• Asset tracking, especially in applications that preclude the use of fixed infrastructure or

involving moving frames of reference

• Distributed sensor automatic survey and dynamic mapping with fused data communications

• Wireless channel impulse response (CIR) measurements