Comparison of direct-sequence impulse radio and direct-sequence ultra-wide bandwidth in multi-user interference

A new ultra-wide bandwidth communication system using both a time-hopping (TH) sequence and a direct spreading sequence, called direct-sequence impulse radio (DS-IR), has recently been proposed. An exact analysis to evaluate the bit error rate (BER) performance of this new scheme in multi-user interference (MUI) is provided. On the basis of this new analysis, ultra-wideband communication systems employing TH, direct-sequence and the newly proposed DS-IR schemes operating in MUI are accurately compared in terms of the BER. Our results indicate that DS-IR outperforms the TH binary phase-shift keying (BPSK) system. However, its performance is poorer than the performance of the conventional full-duty direct sequence BPSK system. Compared with the low-duty direct sequence BPSK system, DS-IR achieves a better error rate performance for medium and large signal-to-noise power-ratio values.