UWB Direct Chaotic Communication Technology for Low-Rate WPAN Applications

The goal of this paper is to describe the design of an ultrawideband (UWB) system that is optimized for low-complexity, low-power, low-cost, and low-rate wireless personal area network applications. To this aim, we propose a system based on novel direct chaotic communication (DCC) technology, in which a 2-GHz-wide chaotic signal is directly generated into the lower band of the UWB spectrum. Based on this system, two simple modulation schemes, namely, chaotic on-off keying and differential chaos-shift keying, are studied, and the performance of both noncoherent and differential-coherent transceiver architectures is evaluated. Various system design parameters and tradeoffs are discussed throughout the paper, including frequency band plans, data throughput, and system scalability. In particular, the frequency-division multiplexing technique is proposed as a low-cost alternative to achieving simultaneous operating piconets for short-distance applications. The average power consumption for various operating data rates and the technical feasibility of implementing the DCC system as a low-cost integrated circuit are also addressed. Finally, Monte Carlo simulations are performed based on the IEEE 802.15.4a standard channel models to evaluate the performance of the two modulation schemes. In general, both schemes experience little degradation under multipath environments due to the self-inherent wideband characteristic of the chaotic signal.