The effects of timing jitter and tracking on the performance of impulse radio

Impulse radio (IR) is a promising ultra-wideband technique for tactical military communications. A key feature of time-hopping IR are the very narrow pulses used to convey information. Analysis of such time-hopping schemes under a variety of assumptions have been reported in the literature. However, none of these studies to date consider the effects of timing jitter and tracking on time-hopping in a ultra-wideband (UWB) setting. We consider the effects of timing jitter and tracking on the performance of binary and 4-ary UWB communications. We find that the performance of IR is very sensitive to timing jitter and tracking, at least in part due to the very narrow pulses. We also find that in the presence of timing jitter and tracking, orthogonal 4-ary pulse position modulation (PPM) out performs binary offset PPM at all jitter levels in thermal and pulse noise. Simulation results are presented that quantify the sensitivity of binary and 4-ary IR to timing jitter and tracking error.