Impulse radio UWB system architecture for smart wireless sensor networks

This paper introduces a proposal for an impulse radio ultra wideband transceiver system architecture, suitable for its use in smart wireless sensor networks, providing both communication and location capabilities. The concept of smart sensor network has recently gained a huge attention into the scientific world and business markets, mainly due to its feasible applications for environment measurements, threat detection and avoidance, surveillance or localisation purposes. The system architecture description covers from baseband and processing, to RF, pulse generation, pulse reception, signal sampling and synchronization issues.