An Ultra Wideband Transmitted Reference Scheme Gaining from Intersymbol Interference

We consider a wireless body area network (WBAN) with an average per link throughput of about 500 kbps based on an ultra wideband (UWB) transmitted reference (TR) scheme. For a long battery autonomy a low duly cycle operation of the nodes and thus a high peak data rate is a promising concept. Due to a moderate path loss, a peak data rate in excess of 50 Mbps would be feasible with respect to the FCC power constraints. With current low complexity UWB TR systems, the peak data rate is constrained to much lower values, because they are sensitive to intersymbol interference (ISI). Therefore, the impact of moderate ISI on symbolwise UWB TR detectors is investigated. It is shown that presented UWB TR scheme is robust to ISI and for a specific system setup even benefits from ISI. Due to this gain, the UWB TR scheme outperforms differential phase shift keying (DPSK) in presence of ISI and the FCC peak power constraint.