Detection and interference suppression for ultra-wideband signaling with analog processing and one bit A/D

Standard DSP-centric communication receivers are difficult to implement for reception of ultra-wideband (UWB) signals because of the high cost and power consumption of high-precision analog-to-digital (A/D) converters at multi GHz sampling rates. In this paper, therefore, the possibility of UWB reception based on low-complexity analog processing and/or one bit A/D conversion is investigated. For detection in additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN), we refine classical results to show that the performance loss due to one bit A/D is only about 2 dB. However, we then observe that the performance loss due to quantization in the presence of strong narrowband interference is significant. This motivates our design of a modified front end that performs analog interference suppression using a hardlimiter and an adaptive amplifier gain. This front end, followed by either a matched filter or one bit A/D, yields acceptable performance even with strong narrowband interference.