Synchronisation performance of wireless sensor networks

Ultra Wideband (UWB) has been gaining growing research and industry interests in many different areas of wireless communications. Among them using UWB as a radio interface for wireless sensor network is of high interest due to its precise localisation and low power consuming capabilities. In this paper we carry out quantitative analysis into the synchronisation performance of UWB when it operates under usual wireless channel environments. Simulation results confirm that coherent receiver needs around 10 dB less signal to noise ratio to achieve synchronisation compared to the noncoherent detection. Higher spreading factors lead to noticeable improvement for both coherent and noncoherent detection.