A Design of UWB Communication Testbed with Event Timer-based PPM Demodulator

Ultra-wideband (UWB) communication achieves significantly lower power consumption compared to narrow-band technologies. However, the achievable transfer speed is much lower due to the limitations of UWB receivers. The employment of high-order pulse position modulation (PPM) in conjunction with a high-accuracy event timer at the demodulator side allows for radically increased transfer speed without compromising the power consumption. The purpose of the given paper is to present an implementation of a modular software framework and initial testbed for the exploration of high-order PPM communication which employs an event timer-based time-to-digital converter (TDC) at the receiver side. The architecture of the software framework, along with its integration with Eventech A033-ET event timer and Diglent Digital Discovery instruments, are presented. Assessment of the performance of the testbed is provided in terms of stability of the operation and bit error ratio (BER).