Timing and robustness analysis of Pulsed-Index protocols for single-channel IoT communications

Pulsed-Index Communication (PIC) is a novel technique for single-channel, high-data-rate, low-power dynamic signaling that does not require any clock and data recovery. It is fully adapted to the simple yet robust communication needs of IoT devices and sensors. In this paper, we present a full quantitative analysis of the timing and robustness properties of PIC protocols, including the impact of important protocol parameters such as pulse width and inter-symbol delays on average data rate and protocol robustness with respect to clock variations. The main result of this paper is a theoretical upper bound on clock variability between transmitter and receiver below which the protocol operates with zero decoding error over an ideal channel. This bound is verified experimentally using a full FPGA implementation that includes point-to-point transmission between two TI MSP430 microcontrollers, acting as two IoT sensor nodes over a single-wire connection.