Performance analysis of UWB systems in the presence of timing jitter

In this paper, performances of different ultra-wideband (UWB) modulation schemes in the presence of timing jitter are evaluated and compared. Static and Rayleigh fading channels are considered. For fading channels, flat and dispersive channels are assumed. First, bit error rate (BER) performances for each case are derived for a fixed value of timing jitter. Later, a uniform distribution of jitter is assumed to evaluate the performance of the system, and the theoretical results are verified by computer simulations. Finger estimation error is treated as timing jitter and an appropriate model is generated. Furthermore, a worst case distribution that provides an upper bound on the system performance is presented and compared with other distributions. Effects of timing jitter on systems employing different pulse shapes are analyzed to show the dependency of UWB performance on pulse shape. Although our analysis assumes uniform timing jitter, our framework can be used to evaluate the BER performance for any given probability distribution function of the jitter.