# IR-UWB Radar-based Situational Awareness System for Smartphone-Distracted Pedestrians

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.00991 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.00991/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 0 of its 20 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 2 Nov 2023.

## Abstract (arXiv)

With the widespread adoption of smartphones, ensuring pedestrian safety on roads has become a critical concern due to smartphone distraction. This paper proposes a novel and real-time assistance system called UWB-assisted Safe Walk (UASW) for obstacle detection and warns users about real-time situations. The proposed method leverages Impulse Radio Ultra-Wideband (IR-UWB) radar embedded in the smartphone, which provides excellent range resolution and high noise resilience using short pulses. We implemented UASW specifically for Android smartphones with IR-UWB connectivity. The framework uses complex Channel Impulse Response (CIR) data to integrate rule-based obstacle detection with artificial neural network (ANN) based obstacle classification. The performance of the proposed UASW system is analyzed using real-time collected data. The results show that the proposed system achieves an obstacle detection accuracy of up to 97% and obstacle classification accuracy of up to 95% with an inference delay of 26.8 ms. The results highlight the effectiveness of UASW in assisting smartphone-distracted pedestrians and improving their situational awareness.