Performance and implementation of a multi-rate IR-UWB baseband transceiver for IEEE802.15.4a

Design, simulation, implementation and performance of IR-UWB baseband conforming to IEEE802.15.4a are discussed. The baseband can support various data rates such as 850 Kb/s, 6.81 Mb/s and 27.24 Mb/s. The design and parameter selection were considered carefully taking into account all possible imperfections that IR-UWB high frequency signal can experience. Energy detection receiver employing a comparator clocked at 499.2 MHz was adopted for the digitisation. Using I and Q path both positive and negative pulses were detected with a high reliability leading to a very good synchronisation performance. Simulation results confirm that the synchronisation is very robust being always correct for office NLOS environment and a large clock deviation between transmitter and receiver. The algorithm presented in this paper was implemented with discrete components, FPGA and signal generators. Experimental results show a good agreement with the simulation for all the data rates and the implemented baseband offers around six meter communication range tested along with a high frequency frontend from discrete components.