UWB System Based on Energy Detection of Derivatives of The Gaussian Pulse

A new method for energy detection ultra-wideband systems is proposed. The transmitter of this method uses two pulses that are different-order derivatives of the Gaussian pulse to transmit bit 0 or 1. These pulses are appropriately chosen to separate their spectra in the frequency domain. The receiver is composed of two energydetection branches. Each branch has a filter which captures the signal energy of either bit 0 or 1. The outputs of the two branches are subtracted from each other to generate the decision statistic. The value of this decision statistic is compared to the threshold to determine the transmitted bit. This new method has the same bit error rate (BER) performance as energy detection-based pulse position modulation (PPM) in additive white Gaussian noise channels. In multipath channels, its performance surpasses PPM and it also exhibits better BER performance in the presence of synchronization errors

Development and Experimental Analysis of Wireless High Accuracy Ultra-Wideband Localization Systems for Indoor Medical Applications

This dissertation addresses several interesting and relevant problems in the field of wireless technologies applied to medical applications and specifically problems related to ultra-wideband high accuracy localization for use in the operating room. This research is cross disciplinary in nature and fundamentally builds upon microwave engineering, software engineering, systems engineering, and biomedical engineering. A good portion of this work has been published in peer reviewed microwave engineering and biomedical engineering conferences and journals. Wireless technologies in medicine are discussed with focus on ultra-wideband positioning in orthopedic surgical navigation. Characterization of the operating room as a medium for ultra-wideband signal transmission helps define system design requirements. A discussion of the first generation positioning system provides a context for understanding the overall system architecture of the second generation ultra-wideband positioning system outlined in this dissertation. A system-level simulation framework provides a method for rapid prototyping of ultra-wideband positioning systems which takes into account all facets of the system (analog, digital, channel, experimental setup). This provides a robust framework for optimizing overall system design in realistic propagation environments. A practical approach is taken to outline the development of the second generation ultra-wideband positioning system which includes an integrated tag design and real-time dynamic tracking of multiple tags. The tag and receiver designs are outlined as well as receiver-side digital signal processing, system-level design support for multi-tag tracking, and potential error sources observed in dynamic experiments including phase center error, clock jitter and drift, and geometric position dilution of precision. An experimental analysis of the multi-tag positioning system provides insight into overall system performance including the main sources of error. A five base station experiment shows the potential of redundant base stations in improving overall dynamic accuracy. Finally, the system performance in low signal-to-noise ratio and non-line-of-sight environments is analyzed by focusing on receiver-side digitally-implemented ranging algorithms including leading-edge detection and peak detection. These technologies are aimed at use in next-generation medical systems with many applications including surgical navigation, wireless telemetry, medical asset tracking, and in vivo wireless sensors

M-ary energy detection of a Gaussian FSK UWB system

The energy detection M-ary Gaussian frequency-shift keying (FSK) system is proposed in this paper. The system performance is analyzed in additive white Gaussian noise channels, multipath channels, and in the presence of synchronization errors. The numerical results show that the M-ary modulation achieves the higher data rate than the binary modulation. However, it also results in performance degradation

M-ary energy detection of a Gaussian FSK UWB system

The energy detection M-ary Gaussian frequency-shift keying (FSK) system is proposed in this paper. The system performance is analyzed in additive white Gaussian noise channels, multipath channels, and in the presence of synchronization errors. The numerical results show that the M-ary modulation achieves the higher data rate than the binary modulation. However, it also results in performance degradation

Wireless Localization Systems: Statistical Modeling and Algorithm Design

Wireless localization systems are essential for emerging applications that rely on context-awareness, especially in civil, logistic, and security sectors. Accurate localization in indoor environments is still a challenge and triggers a fervent research activity worldwide. The performance of such systems relies on the quality of range measurements gathered by processing wireless signals within the sensors composing the localization system. Such range estimates serve as observations for the target position inference. The quality of range estimates depends on the network intrinsic properties and signal processing techniques. Therefore, the system design and analysis call for the statistical modeling of range information and the algorithm design for ranging, localization and tracking. The main objectives of this thesis are: (i) the derivation of statistical models and (ii) the design of algorithms for different wire- less localization systems, with particular regard to passive and semi-passive systems (i.e., active radar systems, passive radar systems, and radio frequency identification systems). Statistical models for the range information are derived, low-complexity algorithms with soft-decision and hard-decision are proposed, and several wideband localization systems have been analyzed. The research activity has been conducted also within the framework of different projects in collaboration with companies and other universities, and within a one-year-long research period at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA. The analysis of system performance, the derived models, and the proposed algorithms are validated considering different case studies in realistic scenarios and also using the results obtained under the aforementioned projects

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 non-Gaussian 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