Abstract:
Ultra-wideband (UWB) radios have received increasing attention for
their capability to overlay legacy systems, their low-power
consumption and low-complexity implementation. Because of the pulsed
or duty-cycled nature of the ultra-short transmitted waveforms, timing
synchronization and channel estimation pose major challenges. In this
presentation, I will introduce the concept of "dirty templates" and
give two applications of this concept. One application is a novel
synchronization criterion that we term Timing with Dirty Templates
(TDT), based on which we develop and test timing algorithms in both
data-aided and non-data-aided modes. The other application is a
noncoherent UWB (de)modulation scheme, which remains operational even
without timing and channel information. This scheme simplifies to a
differential UWB system when perfect timing is available. It can also
be adapted to improve the bit-error-rate (BER) performance of a
Transmitted Reference (TR) UWB system in the presence of timing
offsets or residual timing acquisition errors.