Reducing timing jitter in UWB-IR threshold detectors

Threshold detection is a simple and an excellent choice for UWB-IR receivers used in high precision positioning applications. However, due to variations in the shape and amplitude of the received signals, the threshold detectors suffer from timing jitter, leading to loss in timing precision. In this paper, a methodology to reduce the timing jitter in threshold detectors is proposed. It is shown that by increasing the front-end gain and ensuring that the gain stage is saturated prior to being input to the diode detection state, the rise-time and hence standard deviation in the estimation of the time of arrival of the signal is reduced. This improves ranging accuracy when this receiver is used for positioning applications.