An Iterative Transmitted Reference UWB Receiver for Joint ToA and Data Symbols Estimation

In impulse radio ultra-wideband (IR-UWB) literature, simple transmitted reference (TR) autocorrelation receiver has been analyzed for data symbol detection. However, TR receiver is neither energy efficient nor data transmission rate efficient due to transmission of two pulses per data symbol. In this paper, we propose an iterative TR (ITR) UWB receiver for the joint time of arrival (ToA) and data symbol estimation. The proposed ITR receiver uses only single reference pulse for a burst of data symbols. The ITR receiver estimates a new reference pulse from the burst of data symbols' pulses to further enhance the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of UWB system. Hence, the proposed ITR receiver has high energy efficiency and data rate transmission efficiency with improved SNR as compared to a TR receiver. Further, the proposed ITR receiver is implemented at sub-Nyquist rate to overcome the high sampling rate analog-to- digital converter. The ITR receiver's ToA and data symbol estimation performance is analyzed for the binary phase shift keying modulated UWB system in standard IEEE 802.15.4a channels in the presence of additive white Gaussian noise.