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.     

Noncoherent ultra-wideband systems

The need for low-complexity devices with low-power consumption motivates the application of suboptimal noncoherent ultra-wideband (UWB) receivers. This article provides an overview of the state of the art of recent research activities in this field. It introduces energy detection and autocorrelation receiver front ends with a focus on architectures that perform the initial signal processing tasks in the analog domain, such that the receiver does not need to sample the UWB received signals at Nyquist rate. Common signaling and multiple access schemes are reviewed for both front ends. An elaborate section illustrates various performance tradeoffs to highlight preferred system choices. Practical issues are discussed, including, for low-data-rate schemes, the allowed power allocation per pulse according to the regulator?s ruling and the estimated power consumption of a receiver chip. A large part is devoted to signal processing steps needed in a digital receiver. It starts with synchronization and time-of-arrival estimation schemes, introduces studies about the narrowband interference problem, and describes solutions for high-data-rate and multiple access communications. Drastic advantages concerning complexity and robustness justify the application of noncoherent UWB systems, particularly for low-data-rate systems.     

Performance of ultra-wideband communications with suboptimal receivers in multipath channels

The performance of a single-user ultra-wideband (UWB) communication system employing binary block-coded pulse-position modulation (PPM) and suboptimal receivers in multipath channels is considered. The receivers examined include a RAKE receiver with various diversity combining schemes and an autocorrelation receiver, which is used in conjunction with transmitted reference (TR) signaling. A general framework is provided for deriving the performance of these receivers in multipath channels corrupted by additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN). By employing previous measurements of indoor UWB channels, we obtain numerical results for several cases which illustrate the tradeoff between performance and receiver complexity.     

On the performance of a rapid synchronization algorithm for IR‐UWB receivers

Because of the very low signal duty cycles, synchronization is the most critical issue in ultra wideband (UWB) impulse radio (IR) systems. Some effective synchronization schemes like a symbol‐differential (SD) IR‐UWB receiver have been proposed to synchronize received signals rapidly. Yet, SD IR‐UWB receiver is unsuitable for operation in multi‐user environment because of multiple access interference (MAI). By taking advantage of frame‐differential IR‐UWB receivers, we propose a parallel frame‐differential (PFD) IR‐UWB receiver to do so. Our proposed PFD IR‐UWB receiver manifests better immunity against message passing interface and MAI than the SD IR‐UWB. Based on this PFD IR‐UWB receiver, uncertain (search) regions are limited to one frame duration without any symbol‐level synchronization process. Performance of PFD and SD receivers are compared by computer simulations, showing that the proposed PFD receiver not only achieves significant bit error rate performance but also better and more robust results than the SD receiver in this literature. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A Survey on Various Coherent and Non-coherent IR-UWB Receivers

The recent developments in radio technologies, paves its way to impulse radio (IR) ultra-wideband (UWB) communication, which is used for low power, short range and high bandwidth communication, thereby exploiting a large portion of radio spectrum. In this paper, a brief review of the work done by various researchers on coherent and non-coherent IR-UWB receivers has been analysed, based on their bit error rate (BER) performances, as well as pros and cons of using these receivers. An in depth study on the receivers concludes that, non-coherent IR-UWB receiver is preferred over its counterpart coherent IR-UWB receiver even though it comes at the expense of poor BER performance. The simulation results prove that, though the performances are same, the low complexity of energy detector (ED) receivers gives an edge over the autocorrelation receivers. Further, ED receiver suffers from noise, which paves way to using weighted ED (WED) receiver. The superiority of WED receivers over all the other non-coherent UWB receivers is further confirmed by the simulation performed in AWGN and IEEE 802.15.4a UWB channels. It can also be concluded from the review that, some special receivers such as generalized likelihood ratio test, multi-symbol differential detector and decision feedback differential transmitted reference, when clubbed with UWB systems, lead to further improvement in BER 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.     

An Effective Timing Synchronization Scheme for DHTR UWB Receivers

In performing short-distance, high-data-rate wireless communications using ultra-wideband (UWB) systems, it is necessary to reduce the average transmission power and ensure a fixed synchronization error between the transmitter and receiver ends. Furthermore, to reduce multipath interference, the UWB system should be sometimes implemented using a rake receiver. However, for such receivers, the delay time and attenuation loss over each transmitted route must be known in advance. In the present study, the complexity of rake receivers with a large number of “fingers” is reduced by means of a delay-hopped transmitted-reference (DHTR) scheme, in which the delayed signal is correlated with the original signal; thereby avoiding the need for a separate template signal. The synchronization performance of the proposed DHTR receiver is analyzed both theoretically and numerically. An effective timing synchronization scheme, designated as “parallel signal acquisition with shared looped delay-line” (PS-SLD), is then proposed. The simulation results show that for multipath environments with a single user, the proposed synchronization scheme achieves a higher detection probability and a lower normalized mean square error (MSE) than the traditional timing dirty templates (TDT) algorithm.     

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.     

Noncoherent Ultra-Wideband (De)Modulation

Ultra-wideband (UWB) radios have received increasing attention recently for their potential to overlay legacy systems, their low-power consumption and low-complexity implementation. Because of the pulsed or duty-cycled nature of the ultra-short transmitted waveforms, timing synchronization and channel estimation pose major, and often conflicting, challenges and requirements. In order to address (or in fact bypass) both tasks, we design and test noncoherent UWB (de)modulation schemes, which remain operational even without timing and channel information. Relying on integrate-and-dump operations of what we term "dirty templates," we first derive a maximum likelihood (ML) optimal noncoherent UWB demodulator. We further establish a conditional ML demodulator with lower complexity. Analysis and simulations show that both can also be applied after (possibly imperfect) timing acquisition. Under the assumption of perfect timing, our noncoherent UWB scheme reduces to a differential UWB system. Our approach can also be adapted to a transmitted reference (TR) UWB system. We show that the resultant robust-to-timing TR (RTTR) approach considerably improves performance of the original TR system in the presence of timing offsets or residual timing acquisition errors     

Cross-Modulation Interference and Mitigation Technique for Ultrawideband PPM Signaling

The detection issues of ultrawideband (UWB) signals depend on the type of modulation scheme that is used during the transmission. Cross-modulation interference (CMI) is a problem that is specific to UWB pulse-position-modulation (PPM) signaling. In this paper, the effects of CMI on the performance of noncoherent UWB receivers are analyzed. The probabilities of error for transmitted-reference (TR) and energy detector (ED) receivers in the presence and absence of CMI are derived. Optimal and suboptimal CMI avoidance algorithms, which are based on novel acquisition techniques, are proposed for Rake receivers. The results show that the performance degradation in both receivers, which is due to the CMI effects, can be significant, depending on the modulation index. TR receivers still can be functional in the presence of CMI, and the target performance level determines the modulation index to be used. It is unlikely that effects of CMI on the performance of ED receivers in the presence of CMI are more severe relative to TR receivers, and the performance level is not acceptable. As a result, PPM signaling is not an appropriate modulation technique for ED receivers that are operating in the CMI region, unless CMI mitigation algorithms can be developed. Furthermore, the proposed optimal and suboptimal algorithms are two promising schemes for avoiding the CMI effects and, consequently, for improving the performance of Rake receivers operating in the CMI region.     

Performance of non-coherent receiver with UWB PPM signal in multipath channels

Mainly due to its implementation simplicity, the non-coherent Ultra-Wide Band （UWB） receiver is attractive for lower data rate applications, which gains much attention again in recent years. In this paper, a General Likelihood Ratio Test （GLRT） based non-coherent receiver on UWB Pulse-Position-Modulation （PPM） signal in multipath channels is derived, and a novel structure is proposed as well. Subsequently, the closed-form expressions of asymptotic error-rate performance related to the non-coherent receiver are also derived and verified.     

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.     

Chaos-Based transmitted-reference ultra-wideband communications

Transmitted-reference (TR) ultra-wideband (UWB) communication systems have gained increasing popularity for the usage in the low data rate application, due to its non-coherent receiver structure. In conventional TR system, non-coherency at the receiver is achieved by sending reference pulses prior to the data-bearing pulses. Then, at the receiver side, reference pulses are used as template signals for correlation with data-bearing pulses. Therefore, the orthogonality between reference and data pulses is obtained in time division multiple access (TDMA) fashion. However, the implementation of a wideband delay line is very difficult in the current low power integrated circuits. In this paper, a TR method called Chaos-Based TR (CB-TR) is proposed. In the proposed method, chaotic sequences are used to separate the reference and data pulses. Such approach exploits the benefits of chaotic signals, such as non-periodicity, easy-to-generate, impulse-like autocorrelation value and low cross-correlation value. Furthermore, in order to decrease the influence of some negative properties of conventional chaotic maps, a modified chaotic generator (MCS) is proposed. Simulation results over the IEEE 802.15.4a channel model show comparable bit error rate performance to other TR methods.     

Mitigation of channel estimation error in TR–UWB system based on a novel MMSE equalizer

The time reversal (TR) technique combined with the ultra-wideband (UWB) system offers a new potential for decreasing the cost and complexity of the UWB receivers. In spite of TR–UWB's good performance in perfect channel state information (CSI), it is very sensitive to the channel estimation error. The effect of channel imperfection on the TR–UWB system is considered in this paper. At first, based on a minimum mean square error (MMSE) equalizer receiver, a prefilter is calculated in closed form to improve the performance of the TR–UWB system in an imperfect CSI scenario. Furthermore, for comparison purposes, a similar calculation for prefilter is carried out based on a simple matched filter (MF) receiver. Then, in order to improve the MF receiver performance, a two-stage iteration-based algorithm is developed. The initial value for this iteration-based improved algorithm is considered to be a prefilter which is calculated in the TR–UWB system with MMSE equalizer. This optimized algorithm causes the channel estimation error in the TR–UWB system to become zero in some steps. Finally, exhaustive simulations are done to demonstrate the performance advantage attained by the improved algorithm.     

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.     

UWB-OFDM系统的符号盲同步方法

该文提出一种适合于UWB-OFDM系统的符号盲同步方法。该方法是基于UWB-OFDM符号中的ZP功率出现规律性的分布特性,利用滑动窗能量检测的办法来进行符号同步。研究了高斯信道和UWB信道下的符号同步方法,并详细分析了UWB信道下接收信号的能量分布特性。为了提高同步性能,设计了多滑动窗方法代替双滑动窗方法。计算机仿真分析表明该方法无论在高斯还是UWB信道下都具有优异的性能。     

基于多天线辅助估计的高精度UWB快速捕获算法研究

本文提出了一种基于多天线辅助估计的UWB(超宽带)快速捕获算法,利用UWB信号的循环平稳特性,将接收信号与它自身延迟一个信息位产生的模板相关,应用最大似然方法就可得到一个粗略的同步时间估计,在充分利用线性天线阵空间分集增益的情况下,这种估计相当准确。在此基础上继续进行精确同步,直到捕获任一符号位的第一帧第一个到达脉冲。文中采用流图法给出了本算法平均捕获时间的闭式解。理论分析和计算机模拟表明,该算法与同等硬件复杂程度和同等捕获精度的其他捕获方法相比可明显地缩短平均捕获时间。     

一种软件无线电GMSK非相干接收机

本文给出了一种适用于软件无线电的突发模式非相干GMSK接收机。该接收机可以在很短的前导字序列内完成载波和符号同步，采用线性近似的非相干检测算法来对非线性的GMSK。信号实现解调。该接收机采用前馈结构实现快速同步，同时具有较低的计算复杂度和相对优越的性能，适合于在线性软件无线电接收机平台上实现。通过仿真给出了该接收机与几种典型GMSK。接收机的性能比较，并且在实际软件无线电平台上得到验证。     

Space-Time Adaptive MMSE Multiuser Decision Feedback Detectors With Multiple-Feedback Interference Cancellation for CDMA Systems

In this paper, we propose a novel space-time minimum mean square error (MMSE) decision feedback (DF) detection scheme for direct-sequence code-division multiple access (DS-CDMA) systems with multiple receive antennas, which employs multiple-parallel-feedback (MPF) branches for interference cancellation. The proposed space-time receiver is then further combined with cascaded DF stages to mitigate the deleterious effects of error propagation for uncoded schemes. To adjust the parameters of the receiver, we also present modified adaptive stochastic gradient (SG) and recursive least squares (RLS) algorithms that automatically switch to the best-available interference cancellation feedback branch and jointly estimate the feedforward and feedback filters. The performance of the system with beamforming and diversity configurations is also considered. Simulation results for an uplink scenario with uncoded systems show that the proposed space-time MPF-DF detector outperforms existing schemes such as linear, parallel DF (P-DF), and successive DF (S-DF) receivers in terms of bit error rate (BER) and achieves a substantial capacity increase in terms of the number of users, compared with the existing schemes. We also derive the expressions for MMSE achieved by the analyzed DF structures, including the novel scheme, with imperfect and perfect feedback and expressions of signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) for the beamforming and diversity configurations with linear receivers.     

Low Complexity Rake Receivers in Ultra-Wideband Channels

One of the major issues for the design of ultra-wideband (UWB) receivers is the need to recover the signal energy dispersed over many multipath components, while keeping the receiver complexity low. To this aim we consider two schemes for reduced-complexity UWB Rake receivers, both of which combine a subset of the available resolved multipath components. The first method, called partial Rake (PRake), combines theirs/ arriving multipath components. The second is known as selective Rake (SRake) and combines the instantaneously strongest multipath components. We evaluate and compare the link performance of these Rake receivers in different UWB channels, whose models are based on extensive propagation measurements. We quantify the effect of the channel characteristics on the receiver performance, analyzing in particular the influence of small-scale fading statistics. We find that for dense channels the performance of the simpler PRake receiver is almost as good as that of the SRake receiver, even for a small number of fingers. In sparse channels, however, the SRake outperforms the PRake significantly. We also show that for a fixed transmitted energy there is an optimum transmission bandwidth