METHOD FOR MEASURING TIME OF ARRIVAL OF SIGNALS IN A COMMUNICATIONS NETWORK

摘要

A method for measuring the Time Of Arrival of signals in a communications network is provided. A transmitter emits a beacon that is a digital message of known content, followed by timing information. The message is preceded by a pseudo-random binary phase-shift keying (BPSK) modulated sequence that allows the receiver to synchronize on the received signal using the autocorrelation method. During the synchronization process, are computed the approximated Time Of Arrival (TOA) and approximated frequency difference between the local oscillator and the received signal. The content of the beacon message is then used for correcting the approximated TOA and the frequency differences, providing results of very high precision of TOA. The timing information that follows the beacon is used for network clock synchronization and for computing the distances between network nodes.