A joint timing synchronization, channel estimation, and SFD detection for IR-UWB systems

This paper proposes a joint timing synchronization, channel estimation, and data detection for the impulse radio ultrawideband systems. The proposed timing synchronizer consists of coarse and fine timing estimation. The synchronizer discovers synchronization points in two stages and performs adaptive threshold based on the maximum pulse averaging and maximum (MAX-PA) method for more precise synchronization. Then, iterative channel estimation is performed based on the discovered synchronization points, and data are detected using the selective rake (S-RAKE) detector employing maximal ratio combining. The proposed synchronizer produces two signals-the start signal for channel estimation and the start signal for start frame delimiter (SFD) detection that detects the packet synchronization signal. With the proposed synchronization, channel estimation, and SFD detection, an S-RAKE receiver with binary pulse position modulation binary phase-shift keying modulation was constructed. In addition, an IEEE 802.15.4a channel model was used for performance comparison. The comparison results show that the constructed receiver yields high performance close to perfect synchronization.