On UWB Pulse Distortion Caused by Amplifiers and Mismatched Antennas

This publication examines the influence of amplifiers and antenna mismatch on an ultra-wideband pulse. Using a state of the art ultra-wideband chip and an external power amplifier, we analyzed the impact of gain compression on the estimated channel impulse response. In addition, the impact of multiple reflections between a mismatched antenna and the amplifier output was investigated for different electrical lengths between the two. We showed that the peak power of an ultra-wideband signal is significant for the dynamic range of the calculated cross correlation function. Furthermore, we discussed which distortion and multipath effects really have an influence on the ranging estimate of an UWB system.