Spectrum Shaping and NBI Suppression in UWB Communications

This paper investigates spectrum shaping in ultra-wideband (UWB) communications in order to introduce spectral nulls to limit interference with narrowband signals. Each transmitted symbol is represented by a "coded Gaussian monocycle pulse" in which Gaussian monocycles are weighted, delayed and summed in accordance with a designed codeword. The use of the Gaussian monocycle ensures that the UWB spectrum mask established by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is met, and the codeword is designed to generate a spectral null at the frequency or frequencies being used by existing narrowband devices. Signals obtained with different spectrum shapings (e.g., Butterworth, Chebyshev, elliptical) and by introducing nulls at multiple interference frequency bands are discussed. This approach can be used in various systems; as one application, we simulate the performance of a coded monocycle UWB system with a spectral null in the presence of narrowband interference (NBI) using single carrier block transmission with frequency domain equalization (SC-FDE), and compare its performance with that of an uncoded SC-FDE UWB system using a single Gaussian monocycle. Our results show that NBI can be effectively suppressed by transmitting and matched filtering the pulse with a spectral null at the interference frequency, therefore improving the robustness of UWB systems to NBI