VHDL-AMS Modeling of an UWB Radio Link Including Antennas

System simulation of mixed-signal wireless circuits such as Ultra-Wideband (UWB) systems requires the development of behavioral models of the RF link (antenna-medium-antenna) compatible with the microelectronic design tools. This paper presents a new UWB radio link model including antennas written in VHDL-AMS. This model is used in a complete UWB communication system. Firstly, a method of characterizing and modeling an UWB radio link is presented. This method takes into account the modeling constraints imposed by a standardized hardware description language. The achieved VHDL-AMS model is compared to measurement results. Several system simulation examples are presented to demonstrate the interest of our approach.