Performance Analysis of Three Kinds of Non-Coherent Detectors for Ultra-Wideband Communications

This paper discusses the basic signal detection scheme and error performances of three kind receiver architecture, i.e., the peak detector, the square-law detector and the direct-integral receiver. The theoretical bit error probabilities are derived through Gaussian approximation that is well satisfied in UWB systems. Simulations are performed in the additive white Gaussian (AWGN) channel model and results shows that the theoretical curve derived from the analytical model is in accordance with the experimental curve. This paper indicates that the bit error rate (BER) performance of direct-integral detectors is slightly better than energy detectors (EDs) when E_b/N₀ is small (less than 6.5db). Besides, this paper indicates that, compare with coherent detectors, Direct-integral detector has a potential to achieve an appropriate tradeoff between error rate performance and system complexity.