Impact of synchronization errors and multiple access interference to the performance of UWB impulse radio systems

The paper deals with the comparison of different multiple access techniques and different impulses in a multiple access communication system based on ultra wide band (UWB) impulse radio technology under non-ideal conditions. Several multiple access techniques and impulses have been designed and compared in the past, but mainly with the assumption of perfect synchronization of the users and perfect recovery of frame synchronization at the receiver. We drop these impractical assumptions. The results have been obtained by computer simulations. The sensitivity to synchronization errors of time hopping PPM and direct sequence multiple access techniques has been carried out with two different pulse shapes, the Gaussian monocycle and the doublet. The impact of multiple access interference is also reported in order to have an exhaustive comparison of UWB systems.