Adding lower data-rates to IEEE 802.15.6 Impulse-Radio Ultra-Wideband DPSK Physical Layer

This paper investigates possible amendment of the IEEE 802.15.6 standard for Body Area Network (BAN). Particularly, we study amending the IEEE 802.15.6 Impulse-Radio Ultra-Wideband (IR-UWB) DPSK Physical Layer (PHY) through adding data rates lower than what is currently both the lowest and mandatory data rate of this PHY. The motivation for this study is enhancing link margin and, more importantly, enhancing PHY's multi-BAN interference resistivity, crucial in medical applications of IEEE 802.15.6 BAN. Three different possibilities of adding lower data rates are considered. The first is increasing transmitted waveform duration and thus symbol rate; the second is introducing a spreading sequence and using current mandatory data rate symbols as chips; the third is introducing an inner convolution code for concatenation with the existing BCH(63,51) block code. Performances of these communication schemes are studied in multi-BAN interference.