TOA Estimation Using Checking Window for IR-UWB Energy Detection Receivers

Precise ultra-wideband (UWB) ranging requires accurate estimation of time of arrival (TOA). In this paper,a novel TOA estimation approach using checking window is proposed for energy detection (ED) receivers in dense multipath channels. Unlike the traditional methods that treat the multipath components (MPCs) as interference sources, the proposed scheme exploits the MPCs to consolidate the detection of the first path (FP). By detecting dense threshold-crossing (TC) events over successive energy samples with the checking window, the MPCs are collected, and the false TC events that sparsely distributed in the noise region can be recognized and neglected for the FP detection. As a result, the early false detection is reduced and the leading edge detection is improved. Simulations demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed scheme in IEEE 802.15.4a channels.