Improving the coverage of ultra wideband impulse radio by pulse compression

Radio coverage is limited by two parameters: (i) energy per bit radiated by the transmitter and (ii) BER performance of the receiver. In Ultra-Wideband Impulse Radio (UWB IR) the former is limited by the FCC Regulations while the latter depends on the detection algorithm. The fact that prevents the use of UWB IR devices in real applications is the unacceptable short radio coverage. The pulse compression technique, that simultaneously increases the maximum attainable energy per bit and introduces a processing gain at the receiver is proposed here to overcome this problem. As a result of pulse compression, the coverage of the new UWB chirp IR devices is 6-times longer than that of the conventional UWB IR devices, i.e., the radio coverage is extended from less than 10 meters up to 40 meters.