Implementation Aspects of a Transmitted-Reference UWB Receiver

In this paper, we discuss the design issues of an ultra wide band (UWB) receiver targeting a single-chip CMOS implementation for low data-rate applications like ad hoc wireless sensor networks. A non-coherent transmitted reference (TR) receiver is chosen because of its small complexity compared to other architectures. After a brief recapitulation of the UWB fundamentals and a short discussion on the major differences between coherent and non-coherent receivers, we discuss issues, challenges and possible design solutions. Several simulation results obtained by means of a behavioral model are presented, together with an analysis of the trade-off between performance and complexity in an integrated circuit implementation

Novel wireless modulation technique based on noise

In this paper, a new RF modulation technique is presented. Instead of using sinusoidal carriers as information bearer, pure noise is applied. This allows very simple radio architectures to be used. Spread-spectrum based technology is applied to modulate the noise bearer. Since the transmission bandwidth of the noise bearer can be made very wide, up to ultra-wideband regions, extremely large processing gains can be obtained. This will provide robustness in interference-prone environments. To avoid the local regeneration of the noise reference at the receiver, the Transmit-Reference (TR) concept is applied. In this concept, both the reference noise signal and the modulated noise signal are transmitted, together forming\ud the bearer. The reference and modulated signals are separated by applying a time offset. By applying different delay times for different channels (users) a new multiple access scheme results based on delay: Delay Division Multiple Access (DDMA). A theoretical analysis is given for the link performance of a single-user and a multi-user system. A testbed has been built to demonstrate the concept. The demonstrator operates in a 50 MHz bandwidth centered at 2.4 GHz. Processing gains ranging from 10¿30 dB have been tested. The testbed confirms the basic behavior as predicted by the theory

Performance evaluation of non-prefiltering vs. time reversal prefiltering in distributed and uncoordinated IR-UWB ad-hoc networks

Time Reversal (TR) is a prefiltering scheme mostly analyzed in the context of centralized and synchronous IR-UWB networks, in order to leverage the trade-off between communication performance and device complexity, in particular in presence of multiuser interference. Several strong assumptions have been typically adopted in the analysis of TR, such as the absence of Inter-Symbol / Inter-Frame Interference (ISI/IFI) and multipath dispersion due to complex signal propagation. This work has the main goal of comparing the performance of TR-based systems with traditional non-prefiltered schemes, in the novel context of a distributed and uncoordinated IR-UWB network, under more realistic assumptions including the presence of ISI/IFI and multipath dispersion. Results show that, lack of power control and imperfect channel knowledge affect the performance of both non-prefiltered and TR systems; in these conditions, TR prefiltering still guarantees a performance improvement in sparse/low-loaded and overloaded network scenarios, while the opposite is true for less extreme scenarios, calling for the developement of an adaptive scheme that enables/disables TR prefiltering depending on network conditions

Multi-User Multi-Carrier Differential Chaos Shift Keying Communication System

In this paper, a multi user Multi-Carrier Differential Chaos Shift Keying (MC-DCSK) modulation is presented. The system endeavors to provide a good trade-off between robustness, energy efficiency and high data rate, while still being simple. In this architecture of MC-DCSK system, for each user, chaotic reference sequence is transmitted over a predefined subcarrier frequency. Multiple modulated data streams are transmitted over the remaining subcarriers allocated for each user. This transmitter structure saves energy and increases the spectral efficiency of the conventional DCSK system.Comment: Accepted in the IEEE International Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing Conference (IWCMC 2013

Performance Analysis and Optimization of Tc-DTR IR-UWB Receivers over Multipath Fading Channels with Tone Interference

International audienceIn this paper, we analyze the performance of a particular class of transmitted-reference receivers for impulse radio ultra wideband communication systems, which is called chip-time differential transmitted-reference (Tc-DTR). The analysis aims at investigating the robustness of this receiver to single-tone and multi-tone narrowband interference (NBI) and comparing its performance with other non-coherent receivers that are proposed in the literature. It is shown that the Tc-DTR scheme provides more degrees of freedom for performance optimization and that it is inherently more robust to NBI than other non-coherent receivers. More specifically, it is analytically proved that the performance improvement is due to the chip-time-level differential encoding/decoding of the direct sequence (DS) code and to an adequate design of DS code and average pulse repetition time. The analysis encompasses performance metrics that are useful for both data detection (i.e., average bit error probability) and timing acquisition (i.e., false-alarm probability Pfa and detection probability Pd). Moving from the proposed sem-analytical framework, the optimal code design and system parameters are derived, and it is highlighted that the same optimization criteria can be applied to all the performance metrics considered in this paper. In addition, analytical frameworks and theoretical findings are substantiated through Monte Carlo simulations