Packet-Level Interference Estimation and Adaptive Rate Control in Ultra-Wideband (UWB) Radio

Pulse discrimination and rate adaptation have been shown to yield significant performance improvement for ultra-wideband (UWB) impulse radio (IR) networks in high-power pulse interfering environments. Here we extend these ideas and present a technique where receivers autonomously estimate the interference environment on a packet time scale. We show how the combination of the three techniques significantly reduces transponder complexity, network interference, average transmitted power, and improves system throughput. We illustrate these advantages by developing a method for estimating packet transmission failure in uncoordinated, unslotted ALOHA ultra wideband (UWB) networks