Receiver architectures for UWB-based transmit-only sensor networks

We are interested in designing a low-cost, ultra-wide-band (UWB) sensor network, that consists of a large number of sensor nodes (SNs), which sense the environment and transmit the resulting data via a wireless radio link to so-called cluster heads (CHs). We focus on low-cost transmit-only SNs; the resulting uncoordinated multiuser-access causes packet collisions. To improve the robustness to packet collision, we propose two novel low-complexity noncoherent receiver architectures: (i) the adaptive CH receiver (CHR) that receives only packets whose signal strength is larger than an adaptive threshold; and (ii) the switching CHR that allows the focus to be switched from a packet of a given SN to a packet from another SN with higher signal strength. Using simulations, we show that the number of received packets during burst periods can be dramatically increased with the adaptive CHR, and even more so with the switching CHR.