Performance analysis of ultrawide bandwidth transmitted-reference communications

Transmitted-reference (TR) signaling in conjunction with an autocorrelation receiver (AcR) offers a low-complexity alternative to Rake reception and can be used to exploit multipath diversity inherent in wideband channels. In this paper, we analyze the performance of an ultrawide bandwidth (UWB) system with TR signaling. Our main contribution is to develop an analytical framework, based on a sampling expansion approach, to derive a closed-form expression for the exact symbol error probability (SEP) of the AcR for an UWB TR signaling system. Our methodology does not require the Gaussian approximation and is applicable for any fading scenario given that the correlator output signal-to-noise ratio can be characterized by a moment generation function.