Abstract: According to the properties of OFDM in the time and frequency domains, a novel ranging method in space is proposed. The coarse estimation of range can be obtained from the correlation of the waveforms of OFDM signals in the time domain, and the fine estimation is obtained from the phase differences between the sub-carriers in the frequency domain. The fine estimation is then adopted to correct the coarse estimation, and the final estimation of range is achieved. Simulation results show that the ranging accuracy of the proposed method is more than 4 times better than that of pseudo-code ranging. Furthermore, the ranging accuracy is close to the centimeter level when the signal-to-noise ratio is beyond 20dB.

Key words: orthogonal frequency division multiplexing, correlation processing, phase measurement, ranging accuracy