Range Extension and Channel Capacity Increase in Direct Short Range Vehicular UWB Communications

Direct short range broadband communication access in vehicles promises to deliver high quality of service IP-based communications with networks deployed in moving vehicles. This paper provides an analysis of range extension and channel capacity increase in such networks when multi-hop communication is adopted for ultra wideband (UWB) communications. Received signal to noise ratio is used with multi-hopping to analyse range extension. Since the received signal levels for each short hop is higher compared with longer hops, the Shannon channel capacity for the short hops are equally higher leading to increased total channel capacity in multi-hop situations. Therefore cheaper and low powered transmitters can be used in the multi-hop scenario. The smaller transceivers also produce less interferences compared to the larger transceivers although it remains to be demonstrated if the total sum of the interference generated by the smaller transmitters is of the same order as that generated by the fewer but bigger transceivers.