Multiple Access Transmitted Reference Pulse Cluster System for UWB Communications

A new transmitted reference structure for ultra-wideband (UWB) communication named transmitted reference (TR) pulse cluster was proposed recently, where the delay between the reference and data pulses is sufficiently short to meet the implementation requirements. In this paper, the multiple access problem for TR pulse cluster systems are investigated and two approaches are compared. The code-division-multiple-access (CDMA) based on block spreading can successfully convert the multi-user interference (MUI) to inter-symbol interference (ISI). However, it requires block long analog wideband delay lines and may not be suitable for implementation. In comparison, time-division-multiple-access (TDMA) is a natural fit to the TR pulse cluster system due to its simplicity.