Performance comparison of binary and quaternary UWB modulation schemes

In this paper we test and compare different modulation strategies to be used in ultra-wide band (IR-UWB) communications. In the UWB systems of interest in this work the information is conveyed by short-duration pulses; the modulation scheme determine how the data stream is to be transmitted over those pulses. Here we test and compare several schemes based on three types of modulation. The first type is the pulse position modulation (PPM), which includes a pulse delay according to the data to be transmitted. The second is the recently proposed pulse shape modulation (PSM), that uses a different pulse shape to each data. The third one, proposed in this paper, is an M-ary modulation scheme that combines the shape and amplitude of the pulse to transmit the data, which we call pulse amplitude and shape modulation (PASM). Other M-ary schemes are tested, including the recent orthogonal M-ary PSM, based on orthogonal Hermite functions, and a new quaternary PPM scheme, also proposed here. All schemes are tested over an AWG channel.