IR-UWB transceiver for communications and ranging beyond 60 GHz

While cellular and WLAN (Wireless Local Area Networks) at low frequencies (1-5 GHz) constantly struggle with the quasi-saturation of spectrum, the EHF band (30-300 GHz) has huge swathes of band available at no cost. The recently allocated 71-76 GHz and 81-86 GHz bands could represent an opportunity to realise Line Of Sight (LOS) links for directional point-to-point ”last mile” ones. This work focuses on the design and BER (Bit Error Rate) performance evaluation of an IR-UWB architecture based on an 85 GHz up-conversion stage of train of ns Gaussian pulses in terms of phase noise, due to oscillators and mixers, Low Noise Amplifier (LNA), High Power Amplifier (HPA) and Antenna distortions. Simulation results show that BER performance, in presence of these RF non-linearities, for an IR-UWB transceiver architecture operating at 85 GHz (with same data rate and bandwidth) are better than a 2-FSK scheme working in a similar scenario.