Design of a low-complexity receiver for impulse-radio ultra-wideband communication systems

In this paper, we propose a low-complexity impulse-radio ultra-wideband (UWB) receiver architecture for short-range communication. Algorithms for pulse position and symbol boundary detection, data despreading and decision as well as timing error tracking are embedded in this receiver. Since hardware simplicity is the main consideration of this design, circuit design issues are taken into account early in the design cycle. Simulation results show that the low-complexity architecture works very well in realistic multipath fading channels.