Active Ultra-Wideband Tag Design for Concrete Debris Tracking Systems

Compared with the traditional high-speed video camerameasurement method, ultra-wideband(UWB) technology is valuable in the detection and tracing of debris throw during explosion, due to its distinct advantages such as high positioning accuracy, multipath immunity, and low power consumption. In this pa-per, dielectric properties of Concrete slabs are first measured and used in the design of a slot antenna embed-ded in Concrete. An active UWB tag integrated with the slot antenna is designed for a real-time debris track-ing system. The tag size is 25 × 25 × 25 mm which can be embedded in Concrete. Due to its small size, the tag has high chance to be intact in fragmented Concrete debris in explosion. The tag has low DC power con-sumption of 22.8 mW with output pulse amplitude of 12 V peak to peak (into 50 ohms) resulting in operating range of more than 190 meters.