Soft-Limiting Receiver Structures for Time-Hopping UWB in Multiple-Access Interference

A novel receiver structure based on soft-limiting is proposed for detecting a time-hopping ultrawide-bandwidth (UWB) signal in the presence of multiple-access interference (MAI). The proposed structure contains a nonlinear limiter for suppressing the MAI. Simulation results show that the proposed receiver achieves better bit-error-rate performance than the conventional matched receiver when operating in MAI. When operating in an MAI-plus-Gaussian-noise environment, the receiver structure outperforms the conventional matched-filter receiver for moderate to large values of signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). A receiver structure with adaptive limiting threshold is further proposed to ensure that the performance of the soft-limiting receiver always meets or surpasses the performance of the conventional UWB receiver for all values of SNR. Application of the soft-limiting structure in the fingers of a rake receiver is shown to enhance the signal-to-noise-plus-interference ratio.     

Non-Coherent Fourth-Order Detector for Impulse Radio Ultra Wideband Systems: Empirical Evaluation Using Channel Measurements

Low-complex and low-power non-coherent energy detectors (EDs) are interesting for low data rate impulse radio (IR) ultra wideband (UWB) systems, but suffer from a loss in performance compared to coherent receivers. The performance of an ED also strongly depends on the integration interval (window size) of the integrator and the window position. This paper presents a non-coherent fourth-order detector (FD) which can discriminate between Gaussian noise signals and non-Gaussian IR-UWB signals by directly estimating the fourth-order moment of the received signal. The performance of the detectors is evaluated using realistic channels measured in a corridor, an office and a laboratory environment. The results show that bit-error-rate (BER) performance of the proposed FD receiver is slightly better than the ED in low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) region and its performance improves as the SNR increases. In addition, BER of the FD receiver is less sensitive to overestimation of the integration interval making it relatively robust to variations of the channel delay spread. Finally, a criteria for the selection of integration time of the proposed detector is suggested.     

Performance analysis for impulse radio and direct-sequence impulse radio in narrowband interference

The impact of narrowband interference (NBI) on two ultra wideband (UWB) systems is analyzed. The two systems are impulse radio (IR) and a variation of it, termed direct-sequence IR (DS-IR). The signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) at the decision device of a correlation receiver is computed for both systems, assuming that the NBI is wide sense stationary and that the channel is frequency-selective. The SNR is expressed by means of a simple equation involving the signal and the interference spectrum. Next, a statistical model for the interference is introduced, considering the interference as the sum of a given number of sinusoidal signals with random powers and frequencies. The bit-error rate of IR and DS-IR is derived. The results are then specialized and compared with simulations in three case studies of practical interest, where the NBI is a single jammer with deterministic power and frequency, a multitone signal with random frequencies, or a grid of interfering signals with random powers.     

Analysis of weighted non-coherent receiver for UWB-OOK signal in multipath channels

Non-coherent receivers are attractive for pulsed Ultra-WideBand （UWB） systems due to the implementation simplicity. However, they have to face the shortage of performance degradation. Several techniques were proposed to alleviate the noise effect and promote the receiver performance, among which is the weighted combining of multiple integration sub-intervals. In this paper, the performance of the weighted non-coherent receiver for UWB On-Off Keying （UWB-OOK） signal in multipath channels is analyzed, in terms of bit-error-rate. In addition, a closed-form expression of the approximately near-optimal weighting coefficient set is derived, and two simple weighting coefficient sets are proposed as well. Finally, the analytic results are verified via the computer simulations, which reveal obvious performance improvements to the conventional energy detector.     

Low-complexity multiuser detectors for time-hopping impulse-radio systems

Impulse radio (IR) and especially time-hopping IR (TH-IR) systems have attracted considerable attention since their introduction in the context of ultra wide-band (UWB) systems in the early 1990s. Recently, with the U.S. Federal Communications Commission actions allowing for the wide-spread use of UWB radio systems, the interest in these systems has grown further. These systems promise to deliver high data rates in multiple access communication channels with very simple transmitter and receiver designs. The importance of multiuser detection for achieving high data rates with these systems has already been established in several studies. This paper studies several low-complexity multiuser detectors specifically designed for TH-IR radio systems. It is demonstrated that many multiuser detectors developed primarily for direct-sequence code division multiple access (DS-CDMA) systems can be used essentially without any change in TH-IR receivers. Further, several novel, low-complexity multiuser detectors that exploit the special signal structure used for transmission by TH-IR systems are developed. These novel detectors are analyzed both theoretically and via simulations. It is shown that a very simple iterative multiuser detector yields performance that is similar to that of a single-user system.     

超宽带信号与常规通信信号的共存性研究

文章简要介绍了脉冲式超宽带信号对GPS系统的影响,以及脉冲式超宽带信号、直接序列超宽带信号、MB-OFDM信号对卫星数字接收机性能的影响,特别分析了不同的信号特征对这些系统干扰的相关性,为了提高系统频率的利用效率,并保证潜在的其他通信系统的性能,超宽带设备需要具有干扰的检测和避让的技术能力。     

A Single Input-Multiple Output Time Reversal UWB Communication System

Time reversal is a promising technique for the improvement of UWB communication systems. Intersymbol interference (ISI) limits the system performance in such wireless systems. This paper presents a general ISI analysis for time reversal UWB communication systems. The time reversal UWB system gives good performance for rates below the coherence bandwidth but at higher data rates the performance of the system is limited by intersymbol interference and bit error rate saturates even for high signal-to-noise ratio. To mitigate the ISI effects, a single input/multiple output (SIMO) time reversal UWB system is used and its performance is analyzed. It is shown that by using a SIMO TR transceiver, ISI reduces and the system capacity increases. Transmitted signal power at SIMO time reversal decreases, therefore in low data rate SISO performance is better than SIMO, But in high rate scenario, SIMO TR suppresses the ISI better than the SISO TR and its performance is better than SISO TR. It is possible to compensate the reduced power by using a receiver with more sensitivity.     

UWB信号对TACAN机载接收机干扰性能分析

超宽带(ultra-wide band,UWB)技术的迅猛发展使UWB设备与现存无线通信系统间兼容性问题的研究越来越重要,UWB信号对其带内及带外不同无线通信系统存在着不同程度的干扰作用。在对战术空中导航系统(Tactical Air Navigation,TACAN)的信号特征进行分析的基础上,结合UWB路径损耗模型,从平均功率的角度讨论了脉冲UWB信号对TACAN系统的干扰情况,为进一步的研究提供了借鉴与参考。     

Joint Parameter Estimation for UWB Energy Detectors Using OOK

In this paper, joint estimation of the optimal threshold, synchronization point, and integration interval is developed for ultrawideband (UWB) energy detectors employing on-off keying (OOK) modulation. Gaussian approximation of the received signal statistics is shown to enable low complexity solutions at the expense of some performance degradation. The performances of the optimal and suboptimal solutions are evaluated and compared. It is shown that explicit BER minimization is required for parameter optimization. Using simulations, number of training symbols required to converge to ideal parameter estimates is demonstrated to be increasing with increasing SNR.     

Ultra-Wideband Communications using Hybrid Matched Filter Correlation Receivers

Transmitted-reference (TR) schemes for time-hopping impulse radio (TH-IR) ultra-wideband (UWB) communications allow the use of simple receiver structures that are able to combine energy from different multipath components without channel estimation. A conventional TR receiver consists of a simple delay-and-multiply operation combined with an integrator. On the downside, it shows a performance loss due to non-linear operations on noise terms (generation of noise-noise cross-terms) when forming the decision variable. This paper describes a hybrid receiver structure for UWB communications that reduces these noise-noise cross-terms by first performing a "matched filtering" operation matched to the time-hopping sequence of pulses. The receiver retains most of the simplicity of the conventional TR receiver, but requires an analog correlator for the time-hopping sequence of pulses. The performance the proposed receiver is analyzed in both AWGN and multipath channels. For the AWGN case, the exact expression for the bit error probability is obtained, which takes into account the nonGaussian nature of the noise-noise cross-terms arising in the correlators. For the multipath case, both inter-frame interference and multipath interference from the reference pulse to the data pulse are considered, and approximate closed-form expressions are derived based on the assumption of a large integration interval. Also approximate criteria for optimal integration interval are obtained for the best receiver performance. Simulation studies are presented to analyze the performance of the proposed receiver structure and to confirm the theoretical analysis     

一种针对UWB-PPM多径信号的加权非相干接收机设计方案

由于实现简单,基于能量检测的非相干超宽带(UWB:Ultra-Wideband)接收机对一些低速数据应用具有很大的吸引力,但另一方面,相对于相干接收机来说其误码性能一般较低.为了提高其误码性能,一种采用子分区积分加权合并的优化措施在文献[4]中被提出.本文针对加权非相干接收机在UWB-PPM多径信号下的情况进行了研究,推导了相应的闭式误码性能表达式,并进一步分析了该接收机的最佳和准最佳加权系数组合.通过计算机仿真对加权非相干接收机的误码性能分析和准最佳加权系数的有效性进行了验证,对子积分区间宽度的影响进行了分析.结果表明,加权非相干接收机在理想情况下至少具有3dB以上的性能提升,并对子积分区间宽度的影响具有一定的强健容忍能力.本文最后提出了一种简单灵活的加权非相干接收机结构设计方案,包括相应的加权系数估计算法和实现结构.     

Pilot-Channel-Assisted Log-Likelihood-Ratio Selective Rake Combining for Low-Rate Ultra-Wideband Communications

For ultra-wideband (UWB) communications with signal energy dispersed by a large number of multipath components, the design of a Rake receiver that can provide a desirable output signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) using only a moderate number of fingers becomes an important issue. In this paper, we propose a pilot-channel-assisted log-likelihood-ratio selective combining (PCA-LLR-SC) scheme for UWB Rake receivers to be used in long-range low-rate UWB communications envisioned by the IEEE 802.15.4a PHY specification. The pilot and data channels are constructed using quadrature sinusoidal bursts that have the same Gaussian envelope. The system parameters are optimized through jointly minimizing the channel estimation mean square error and maximizing the receiver output SNR. Extensive simulations confirm that the proposed PCA-LLR-SC scheme is capable of providing robust low-rate UWB communications in fast-fading multipath channels and in the presence of multi-user interference.     

Low-noise amplifier design for ultrawideband radio

A new theoretical approach for designing a low-noise amplifier (LNA) for the ultra-wideband (UWB) radio is presented. Unlike narrow-band systems, the use of the noise figure (NF) performance metric becomes problematic in UWB systems because of the difficulty in defining the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). By defining the SNR as the matched filter bound (MFB), the NF measures the degree of degradation caused by the LNA in the achievable receiver performance after the digital decoding process. The optimum noise matching network that minimizes the NF as defined above has been solved. When the narrow-band LNA assumption is made, the proposed optimum matching network simplifies to the published optimum narrow-band matching network, and the corresponding NF value also becomes equivalent. Since realizing the optimum matching network is in general difficult, an approach for designing a practical but suboptimum matching network is also presented.     

Performance analysis of OFDM and DAB receivers in the presence of spurious tones

A number of mechanisms can result in the generation of spurious tones in Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) receivers. In this work we determine the Signal-to-Noise-Ratio (SNR) degradation at the output of the Fast-Fourier-Transform (FFT) block and evaluate the performance of a Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) receiver in the presence of such tonal interference. We show that the degradation varies with the central frequency of the interference and demonstrate that relatively weak spurious tones can compromise the performance of a DAB receiver. We provide specific evaluations of the severity of the above effect for all possible DAB systems parameterizations and evaluate the permissible levels of spurious tones in such systems. It is shown that for DAB EEP Mode A protection level 4, tonal interference of 14 dB lower than the signal can compromise the receiver performance.     

Performance of UWB Receivers with Partial CSI Using a Simple Body Area Network Channel Model

Ultra wideband (UWB) communication is a very promising candidate for the use in wireless body area networks (BAN). The high UWB peak data rate allows for medium average data rates in combination with a very low duty cycle, which is the key for a very low power consumption. Devices in a wireless BAN require low complexity. Hence, mainly non-coherent receivers such as energy detector and transmitted-reference receiver are suited. In this paper, the symbol-wise maximum-likelihood (ML) detectors for pulse position modulation (PPM) and transmitted reference pulse amplitude modulation (TR PAM) are derived assuming partial channel state information (CSI) at the receiver. Additionally, also the ML detectors for a combination of PPM and TR PAM are presented. The performance of the derived receiver structures is evaluated using a novel BAN channel model not distinguishing line-of-sight and non line-of-sight situations. This simple channel model is based on 1100 channel measurements in the frequency range between 2 and 8 GHz, which were measured in an anechoic chamber. Using the BAN channel model, performance of the derived receiver structures is evaluated showing that the knowledge of the average power delay profile (APDP) at the receiver improves performance substantially. Requiring only slightly more complexity such receivers are a well suited alternative to non-coherent receivers for the use in a BAN.     

Smart UWB System Based on STC and TR Techniques for BER Performance Enhancement and Interference Rejection

In this research, a novel smart UWB system is introduced. The proposed system is based on using an adaptive maximum ratio combining (MRC) Rake receiver. The proposed adaptive Rake receiver uses Genetic algorithm (GA) to adaptively select the delays of the fingers of the Rake receiver depending on the channel impulse response. It adaptively selects the delays that will allow the Rake receiver to capture most of the energy in the multipath components with minimum complexity. This adaptive Rake receiver is referred to as a GA Rake. The adaptive GA Rake is applied to a single-input single-output and space time coding (STC) multi-input single-output UWB systems. The performance of those systems using a GA Rake is compared to their performance when using a conventional MRC-Rake receiver and showed a great enhancement in performance with less receiver complexity. Also, in this paper, the smart UWB system using STC is modified by using the time reversal (TR) pre-coding technique. The modified system is referred to as a TR smart UWB system. This modification leads to more enhancements in performance and more reduction in receiver complexity over the smart UWB system. Moreover, this paper also shows the ability a TR smart UWB system in combating interference from other UWB systems.     

Performance Analysis of Time Reversal UWB Communication with Non-coherent Energy Detector

Non-coherent receivers, such as energy detectors (ED), are the simplest and the most practical alternatives to coherent receivers for low-rate and low-complexity applications in ultra-wideband (UWB) systems. However, these advantages are achieved at the expense of non-negligible performance degradation. One solution to improve the performance is to make use of time reversal (TR) technique. In this study, the performance of TR technique with non-coherent ED is analyzed in UWB systems. First, we derive an approximate analytical formula for the error probability of TR-ED which is based on tapped-delay line (TDL) channel model. Next, we theoretically and by simulations analyze the optimum integration interval which maximizes the performance of TR-ED. The results show that TR technique, by reducing the integration interval, considerably improves the performance compared to the conventional ED scheme.     

Analysis of DFT-based frequency excision algorithms fordirect-sequence spread-spectrum communications

The capacity of direct-sequence spread-spectrum modulation to reject narrow-band interference can be significantly improved by eliminating narrow-band energy at the receiver in a process called frequency excision. This paper considers several algorithms that operate on the real-time discrete Fourier transform (DFT) of the received signal to perform frequency excision. The case in which only the signal and additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) are present at the receiver is considered as a means of comparing the relative performance of different algorithms that operate without knowledge of the power spectral density of the interference. An approach for analysis, using the postcorrelation signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) as the figure of merit, is presented that is valid for a broad class of spreading modulations. First, the algorithm that sets a fixed fraction of the frequency domain record to zero is examined using rank-order statistics as an analytical tool. This result is then generalized to confirm previous estimates of SNR degradation for the algorithm that sets all values that exceed a threshold to zero. These results are again generalized to apply to the algorithm that sets a fixed fraction of the band to a fixed amplitude while retaining phase information in an algorithm called fraction clip. The relative performances of several clip algorithm options are derived as special cases. Finally, a performance measure of the algorithms in the presence of multiple narrow-band interference is provided and illustrated with an example     

On the UWB system coexistence with GSM900, UMTS/WCDMA, and GPS

This paper evaluates the level of interference caused by different ultra-wideband (UWB) signals to other various radio systems, as well as the performance degradation of UWB systems in the presence of narrowband interference and pulsed jamming. The in-band interference caused by a selection of UWB signals is calculated at GSM900, UMTS/wideband code-division multiple-access (WCDMA), and Global Position System (GPS) frequency bands as a function of the UWB pulsewidth. Several short-pulse waveforms, based on the Gaussian pulse, can be used to generate UWB transmission. The two UWB system concepts studied here are time hopping and direct sequence spread spectrum. Baseband binary pulse amplitude modulation is used as the data modulation scheme. Proper selection of pulse waveform and pulsewidth allows one to avoid some rejected frequency bands up to a certain limit. However, the pulse shape is also intertwined with the data rate demands. If short-pulses are used in UWB communication the high-pass filtered waveforms are preferred according to the results. The use of long pulses, however, favors the generic Gaussian waveform instead. An UWB system suffers most from narrowband systems if the narrowband interference and the nominal center frequency of the UWB signal overlap. This is proved by bit-error rate simulations in an additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel with interference at global system for mobile communication (GSM) and UMTS/WCDMA frequencies.     

Time hopped transmitted reference with multiple autocorrelation sampling for ultra wideband radio

Transmitted reference (TR) schemes for ultra wideband (UWB) eliminate the need for channel estimation, reducing receiver complexity at the cost of reduced performance. This letter proposes a transmitted reference (TR) scheme with multiple autocorrelation sampling detection. The proposed receiver captures the energy in the received signal's autocorrelation side lobes, outperforming the traditional TR scheme for the operational range of signal to noise ratio (SNR) values. Time hoping, as well as the use of bandwidth efficient signaling with favorable spectral characteristics, facilitate significant improvement in system capacity in comparison to a similar scheme using orthogonal chirp signals in multipath spread channels.