Design and Implementation of an UWB Digital Transmitter Based on the Multiband OFDM Physical Layer Proposal

Ultra wideband (UWB) is considered to be the next major step on wireless technologies. This is due to its high data throughput which is combined with low power consumption since it is optimized for short distances. This paper presents the first, to the best of our knowledge, implementation of the digital signal processing module of the UWB transmitter, on a single state-of-the-art FPGA device, supporting even the highest mandatory transmission speeds. The presented design is based on the Multi-band OFDM physical (PHY) layer proposal, prepared by the IEEE 802.15.3a working group.We present the architecture of the system as well as the implementation results for various FPGA devices. We also explore the performance achieved by our architecture when implemented in different reconfigurable devices and we propose a high-end solution for maintaining the full data rates of UWB.