Performance and design of IR-UWB transceiver baseband for wireless sensors

Using UWB for wireless short range, low rate communication has been attracting growing interest due to its low power consumption and very high bandwidth. Moreover, it is able to offer accurate localization in the range of few centimeters. Recognising these qualities, it is desirable to design IR-UWB transceiver which can draw minimum possible power when it is applied for battery driven wireless sensors. For this reason, in this paper, baseband design and performance of IR-UWB transceiver based on the standard IEEE.802.15.4a was investigated with particular emphasis on reducing power consumption. Synchronization algorithm that achieves 16 ns is presented and its performance is very promising offering nearly 100% synchronization for as low SNR as 8 dB. Different resolutions of analogue to digital converter (ADC) are investigated to find out the optimum with respect to power consumption and performance. 4 bit ADC was found to be the most optimal for the sample rate of 62.4 MHz. BER performance of pulse position modulation was evaluated under realistic channel conditions with multipath components.