A comparison of accurate indoor localization of static targets via WiFi and UWB ranging

This paper compares Ultra-Wide Band (UWB) and WiFi technologies as sources of information for accurate localization of static targets in indoor scenarios. Such technologies offer different localization accuracy and they are also characterized by different applicability. UWB provides very accurate localization information, but it requires a dedicated infrastructure and it is not yet widely available in mobile appliances. WiFi gives less accurate localization information but it is integrated in all modern mobile appliances and it does not require a dedicated infrastructure. This paper details on accuracy versus wide applicability trade-off and it provides quantitative criteria to choose one technology or the other. The discussed results are obtained using a new add-on module for JADE which allows embedding diverse sources of ranging information and localization algorithms.