UWB acquisition based on combining multiple correlator outputs

This paper proposes a novel two-stage detection scheme based on multiple correlator outputs to enhance the detection performance in ultra-wideband (UWB) signal acquisition. Due to the rich multipath of UWB channels, the signal energy spreads over multiple correlator outputs, which makes each correlator output have only a portion of the signal energy, and thus, degrades the detection performance of the conventional scheme where a single correlator output is used as the decision variable for detection. In the proposed two-stage detection scheme, the decision variable is formed by combining multiple correlator outputs, making it possible to collect the signal energy spread by the multipath. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme can provide a better detection performance over the conventional scheme in various UWB channel environments.