Optimized Baseband Design of an Ultra-Wideband Impulse Radio Receiver

Ultra-wideband (UWB) impulse radio with its recent definition by the FCC is a promising technology for low-cost, high-rate communications at short ranges. However, high bandwidth and low power of the UWB signals impose some difficult challenges which demand for optimal tradeoffs between complexity and performance. In this paper, we investigate the design issues related to the baseband section of a UWB receiver to exploit the minimum complexity requirements for an acceptable performance. We investigate the complexity requirements of three important parts of the receiver. Namely, analog to digital converter, correlation bank, and Rake combiner are considered. Moreover, we develop a bit-true model to incorporate the effects of round-off noise of different fixed-point internal operations into consideration.