Performance Analysis of Pulse Generators for UWB-Based Sensor Networks

UWB systems based on impulse radio (IR-UWB) have the potential to provide very low duty cycles and low power consumption. Furthermore, IR-UWB has the advantages of being able to carry out precision localization and to handle multi-path signals. Consequently, with its low implementation complexity, it is an ideal candidate for sensor network applications. In an IR-UWB system, pulse generator is a key component because it determines the frequency characteristics of the transmitter and affects the performance of the UWB system. In complement to what has been reported in literature so far, this paper gives a brief overview of recently developed short UWB pulse generation techniques, presents analysis of peak voltage of various pulses and shows the bit-error rate (BER) performance of non-sinusoidal and carrier based pulse generators for sensor network applications.