Non-Linear UWB Receivers with MLSE Post-Detection

A wireless body area network with an average throughput of 500 kbps is considered based on ultra-wideband (UWB) pulse position modulation. For a long battery autonomy ultra low power consumption is essential. A FCC compliant ultra low power UWB communication system was presented. By means of a 1% duty cycle at 50 Mbps peak data rate, the power consumption of the system is estimated below 1 mW. To increase inter-symbol interference (ISI) robustness as well as for synchronization, a simple post-detection maximum-likelihood sequence estimator (MLSE) has been presented. In this work, we extend this MLSE approach to over-sampled energy detectors and non-ideal integration windows. Furthermore, we present optimal MLSE metrics based on partial channel state information as a performance benchmark.