Non-coherent detection of impulse radio UWB signals based on fourth order statistics

• Low-complex and low power non-coherent energy detector (ED) is interesting for low data rate impulse radio (IR) ultra wideband (UWB) systems but, compared to coherent receivers, it suffers from a loss in performance due to low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) at the detector. In addition, the performance of an ED strongly depends on the integration interval (window size) of the integrator and the window position. A non-coherent kurtosis detector (KD) and a fourth-order detector (FD), which can discriminate between Gaussian noise signals and non-Gaussian IR-UWB signals by directly estimating the fourth-order moment of the received signal, are presented. The performance of the detectors is evaluated using real channels measured in a corridor, an office and a laboratory environment. The results show that bit-error-rate (BER) performance of the proposed KD receiver is better than the ED receiver only under certain conditions, while the FD receiver is slightly better than the ED in low SNR region and its performance improves as the SNR increases. In addition, the performance of the FD receiver is less sensitive to overestimation of the integration interval making it relatively robust to variations of the channel delay spread. Finally, a criteria for the selection of integration time of the proposed detector is suggested.

Subject headings

TEKNIK OCH TEKNOLOGIER  -- Elektroteknik och elektronik (hsv//swe)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY  -- Electrical Engineering, Electronic Engineering, Information Engineering (hsv//eng)

Keyword

UWB communications

Non-coherent detection

Higher-order moments

Channel measurement

Publication and Content Type

art (subject category)

ref (subject category)