Chip Discrimination for UWB Impulse Radio Networks in Multipath Channels

Abstract

The recent need for increasingly higher data rates and the ability to utilize unused spectrum has fueled growing interest in UWB from both academia and industry. A variety of UWB physical layer applications have been proposed and implemented including: highspeed, short-range indoor wireless personal area networks (WPAN s), product sensor tags, and low-power, covert military networks. Much of the UWB literature focuses on the Impulse Radio (IR) variety which is characterized by the transmission of multiple time dithered, short duration pulses per data bit. Researchers have consistently studied IR by making key assumptions to simplify system analysis, namely perfect multi-user power control and single path of signal arrival. In the military networks of interest, a variety of line-of-sight (LOS) and non line-of sight (NLOS) paths exist between transceivers operating at different power levels. Careful power control becomes complex when no central node provides service to the entire network and a small number of high-powered co-located users can quickly degenerate system performance. We use computer simulation to investigate the system degradation incurred, in terms of Bit Error Rate (BER), in a multi-user IR network with large near-far power disparity operating in a multi-user indoor environment. We then extend the work presented in [1] for the multi-user Gaussian channel as a solution to mitigate the effects of high-powered interferer signals in the IEEE 802.15.3a indoor multipath environment. Three varieties of RAKE receivers commonly found in literature are investigated: ARAKE, S-RAKE, and P-RAKE. We introduce a novel chip discriminator located at each RAKE finger output that selectively removes finger demodulation metrics based on the product of a constant threshold level T(sub in) and the estimated channel tap coefficient alphak.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Aug 01, 2005
Accession Number
ADA455666

Entities

People

  • Jon R. Ward

Organizations

  • North Carolina State University

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Energy and Power Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Algorithms
  • Communication Systems
  • Computer Simulations
  • Computers
  • Control Systems
  • Demodulation
  • Detectors
  • Digital Signal Processing
  • Discriminators
  • Electrical Engineering
  • Gaussian Channels
  • Intersymbol Interference
  • Multipath Channels
  • Power Levels
  • Radio Equipment
  • Simulations
  • Transmitters

Readers

  • Economics
  • Radio communications and signal processing.