Mm-wave for cm accurate ranging: Signals, building blocks and a little bit of algorithms

Ranging is the process of determining the distance between a tagged object and a reference base station. A few ranges allow to determine the location of that object. In this talk we will focus on the requirements of a system that has the ambition to determine the distance between an object and a base station with an accuracy of 1 cm. The fundamental limitations of such a system will be discussed alongside with the limitations inferred by the realistic situation. In the latter category fall the inaccuracies of the building blocks but also the effect of multi-path propagation. All this will be investigated based on the design of ranging system in the 60 GHz band. We will have a look at the mm Wave building blocks all the way down to the AD/DA in the transceivers. However, to understand these implementation aspects we have to touch the specific signals crafted for ranging and the algorithms that are used in the ranging context.