On the dependence of UWB impulse radio link performance on channel statistics

An important set of applications for ultra-wideband radio involves high data rate communication in indoor, and thus highly cluttered, multipath environments. Hence the statistical model of the multipath channel is an important factor in the evaluation of radio designs. The model should be realistic enough to provide accurate performance estimates, while also simple enough to facilitate rapid simulation and tractable analysis. In this paper we present two simplifications to the standard multipath model and show that both closely reproduce the performance of the standard model for a variety of radio configurations, thus providing lower complexity alternatives for radio simulation or analysis. The characteristics of each model are then compared to gain some insight into the impact of different channel metrics on radio performance.