Adaptive Spread Spectrum Multicarrier Multiple-Access for UWB Systems

Ultra-wideband (UWB) has emerged as an exciting technology for short range, high data rate wireless personal area networks (WPAN) applications. The multiband orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (MB-OFDM) scheme is one of the main candidates for WPAN standardization. In this paper, we propose a new UWB waveform based on a spread spectrum multicarrier multiple-access (SS-MC-MA) scheme that respects the OFDM parameters of the MB-OFDM solution. Then, we suggest an efficient low-complexity resource allocation algorithm that maximizes the total system throughput. Furthermore, we dynamically distribute the time-frequency codes that provide frequency hopping between users, in order to improve our system performance. We show that our proposed system transmits data at much higher attenuation levels and higher throughputs compared to the MB-OFDM system. Consequently, we conclude that our proposed system can be advantageously exploited for high data rate UWB applications.