Pulse antenna permutation and pulse antenna modulation: two novel diversity schemes for achieving very high data-rates with unipolar MIMO-UWB communications

In this paper, we consider the problem of applying the Multiple-Input-Multiple-Output (MIMO) techniques on Impulse-Radio Time-Hopping Ultra-Wideband (IR-TH-UWB) communications. In particular, we propose two novel Space-Time (ST) block codes that are suitable for UWB. The proposed encoded MIMO-UWB schemes present the main advantage of conveying the information only through the positions of the very short unipolar UWB pulses. The constraint of unipolar transmissions keeps the transceiver structures very simple since it imposes no additional constraints on the RF circuitry to control the amplitudes or the phases of the sub-nanosecond UWB pulses. Consider the case where the transmitter is equipped with P antennas and where M PPM modulation positions are available. The first proposed scheme achieves a full transmit diversity order for M ges P while transmitting at the rate of log₂(M) bits Per Channel Use (PCU). The second scheme is fully diverse with any number of antennas and transmits at a rate of M log₂(P)/P bits PCU. The proposed codes permit to achieve different levels of compromise between complexity and performance since scheme 1 necessitates M-dimensional Maximum-Likelihood (ML) decoding while scheme 2 necessitates MP-dimensional decoding. We also present a comprehensive analysis on the enhancement in terms of the data rate achieved at a certain communication distance based on realistic indoor channel models and on an exact system model that takes inter-pulse-interference and intersymbol- interference into consideration.