Characterization of the Qorvo QM33120WDK1 UWB AoA Sensor for Leader-Following Applications

Due to their increasing compactness and versatility, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles are finding extensive use in diverse robotic tasks across numerous fields, such as precision agriculture, environmental exploration, search and rescue, and firefighting. One notable application is leader-follower tasks, which are increasingly utilized, especially in distributed robotics for swarm coordination. This study focuses on validating the suitability of a new ultrawide-band (UWB) technology for leader-follower applications. The hardware includes single and double UWB antennas and differs from traditional UWB-based solutions by integrating ranging measures and Angle of Arrival (AoA). This approach leverages UWB’s benefits over visual-based systems, including low power consumption and computational efficiency, while providing embedded capabilities for polar coordinate localization. The system’s performance was evaluated through comprehensive simulations and real-world testing using a motion capture system as the ground truth. Despite challenges like high errors and non-linearity in AoA measurements with the UWB-pair hardware, our findings suggest promising potential for accurate leader-follower applications.