Training-Based Joint Timing and Channel Estimation for Ultra-Wideband Signals

This paper is concerned with timing synchronization of high rates ultra-wideband (UWB) signals operating in a dense multipath environment, where access must tackle inter-frame interference (IFI), inter-symbol interference (ISI) and even multi-user interference (MUI). A training-based joint timing and channel estimation algorithm is proposed, which is resilient to IFI, ISI, MUI, and pulse distortion. A low-complexity detection scheme similar to transmit-reference (TR) scheme comes out as a by-product, which is robust against moderate timing errors. A lower bound on the probability of correct detection is derived. The results show that the proposed algorithm achieves a significant performance gain in terms of mean square error and bit error rate, compared to the Timing via Dirty-Templates (TDT) algorithms.