In a multipath dominated environment, ultra-wideband (UWB) systems that transmit trains of subnanosecond duration pulses exhibit the desirable property of fine resolution in time of the received paths, which as a result of the impulsive form of the transmitted signal go through fewer amplitude fluctuations than those emanating from systems with narrower bandwidths. Being distributed over a large number of resolvable paths, UWB signal energy is typically collected by the rake receiver. In this thesis, achievable information rates of time-hopping M-ary pulse position modulation UWB systems using either soft- or hard-decision outputs are calculated first, where one distinguishing characteristic observed for the hard-output systems is that increasing the constellation size is advantageous only at sufficiently large values of the code rate. Next, it is shown that with time division duplex UWB systems, for which channel information is available at the ...

This thesis investigates noncoherent multi-channel ultra-wideband receivers. Noncoherent ultra-wideband receivers promise low power consumption and low processing complexity as they, in contrast to coherent receiver architectures, relinquish the need of complex carrier frequency and phase recovering. Unfortunately, their peak data rate is limited by the delay spread of the multipath radio channel. Noncoherent multi-channel receivers can break this rate limit due to their capability to demodulate multi-carrier signals. Such receivers use an analog front-end to separate the received signals into their sub-channels. In this work, the modeling and optimization of realistic front-end components is addressed and their impact on the system performance of noncoherent multi-channel ultra-wideband receivers is analyzed. With a proposed generalized mathematical framework, it is shown that there exists a variety of noncoherent multi-channel receiver types with similar system performance which differ only in their front-end filters. It ...

Ultra-wideband (UWB) communication systems use radio signals with a bandwidth in the range of some hundred MHz to several GHz. Radio channels with dense multipath propagation achieve high multipath diversity, which can be used to improve the robustness and capacity of the communication channel. Furthermore the large bandwidth allows to transmit signals with a small power spectral density such that the interference to other radio signals will be negligible, even if they lie within the same frequency band. In this work the focus is on low-complexity receiver architectures for communication systems in presence of multiple-access interference (MAI). The main objective of this thesis is to develop and to study a framework for communications for transmitted reference (TR) UWB systems and energy detection UWB systems. First, we study the hybrid matched-filter (HMF) receiver for TR UWB systems, which employs matched filters ...

The implementation of wireless transceivers on a single chip in a single technology requires digital realizations of traditional analog building blocks such as phase-locked loops (PLLs). All-digital PLLs (ADPLLs) utilize the zero crossings of signals instead of their amplitudes to realize the frequency synthesizer entirely in digital CMOS technology. This thesis analyzes ADPLLs and highlights the system-level signal processing aspects. A z-domain model and a mixed-signal model are used to develop signal processing algorithms, to perform high-level simulations, and to evaluate the performance of ADPLLs. The impact of imperfections on the output phase noise spectrum are analytically described and compared to event-driven simulation outcomes. Oscillator noise, frequency quantization noise with sigma-delta noise shaping, and reference clock jitter raise the output phase noise level, whereas phase quantization and injection pulling manifest themselves as spurs in the output phase noise spectrum. Furthermore, ...

In the last decades, ranging systems have benefited from advances in the wireless communication field, as multiple access techniques or near-far mitigation algorithms. In CDMA- based (Code-Division Multiple-Access) ranging systems, the properties of the spreading sequence used play a key role on the development of high-precision ranging measurements. This thesis proposes novel efficient generation/correlation architectures of Complement- ary Sets of Sequences (CSS) and sequences derived from them, as Loosely Synchronized (LS) and Generalized Pairwise Complementary (GPC) sequences. We consider the term efficient applicable whether the proposed architectures requires less operations per input sample in comparison with a straighforward implementation (a Tapped-Delay Line implementation). The contributions of the thesis can be divided into two stages: Firstly, we generalize the efficient generation/correlation architectures for binary CSS, derived in previous works, to the multilevel (real-valued) alphabet by using multilevel Hadamard matrices. This approach ...

Tag localization in passive ultra-high frequency radio frequency identification (UHF RFID) has become something of a holy grail since the system was introduced. First and foremost, it promises improved accuracy for inventory systems, which have to deal with false positive reads outside the intended read zone and the consequent corruption of inventory lists. This thesis addresses the problem of passive UHF RFID tag localization, with a focus on range finding methods. It shows how typical system setups influence the propagation channel and why this creates a harsh environment for any type of localization. Based on the conclusions drawn in this channel analysis, tag localization approaches are investigated. It is shown that robust and accurate localization of state-of-the-art UHF RFID transponders is possible only in controlled environments. Wideband and ultra-wideband methods offer considerably greater robustness and accuracy in typical fields of ...

This thesis includes a collection of papers that analyze and derive the properties of Ultra Wideband (UWB) radio systems that use Time Hopping for Multiple Access and binary Pulse Position Modulation. New families and generation methods of Time Hopping codes are proposed and properties in terms of cross -correlation, SNR, error probabilities are given. Moreover, interference issues are addressed and an analysis of radio frequency interference effects to a victim UWB receiver is presented. Finally, a cell search procedure in an asynchronous wireless network based on Ultra Wide Band (UWB) radio is proposed.

In recent years, inertial sensors have undergone major developments. The quality of their measurements has improved while their cost has decreased, leading to an increase in availability. They can be found in stand-alone sensor units, so-called inertial measurement units, but are nowadays also present in for instance any modern smartphone, in Wii controllers and in virtual reality headsets. The term inertial sensor refers to the combination of accelerometers and gyroscopes. These measure the external specific force and the angular velocity, respectively. Integration of their measurements provides information about the sensor’s position and orientation. However, the position and orientation estimates obtained by simple integration suffer from drift and are therefore only accurate on a short time scale. In order to improve these estimates, we combine the inertial sensors with additional sensors and models. To combine these different sources of information, also ...

In multiuser ultra-wideband (UWB) systems, a large number of multipath components (MPCs) are introduced by the channel. One of the main challenges for the receiver is to effectively suppress the interference with affordable complexity. In this thesis, we focus on the linear adaptive interference suppression algorithms for the direct-sequence ultrawideband (DS-UWB) systems in both time-domain and frequency-domain. In the time-domain, symbol by symbol transmission multiuser DS-UWB systems are considered. We first investigate a generic reduced-rank scheme based on the concept of joint and iterative optimization (JIO) that jointly optimizes a projection vector and a reduced-rank filter by using the minimum mean-squared error (MMSE) criterion. A low-complexity scheme, named Switched Approximations of Adaptive Basis Functions (SAABF), is proposed as a modification of the generic scheme, in which the complexity reduction is achieved by using a multi-branch framework to simplify the structure ...

The aim of this thesis is to investigate key issues encountered in the design of transmission schemes and receiving techniques for Ultra Wideband (UWB) communication systems. Based on different data rate applications, this work is divided into two parts, where energy efficient and robust physical layer solutions are proposed, respectively. Due to a huge bandwidth of UWB signals, a considerable amount of multipath arrivals with various path gains is resolvable at the receiver. For low data rate impulse radio UWB systems, suboptimal non-coherent detection is a simple way to effectively capture the multipath energy. Feasible techniques that increase the power efficiency and the interference robustness of non-coherent detection need to be investigated. For high data rate direct sequence UWB systems, a large number of multipath arrivals results in severe inter-/intra-symbol interference. Additionally, the system performance may also be deteriorated by ...

Wireless communication systems rely on a multiple-access technique, i.e., a mechanism to divide the common transmission medium among di erent users. Code-division multiple-access (CDMA) is a multiple-access technique that has received considerable attention in recent years. In a CDMA system, each user spreads his information-bearing signal into a wideband signal, using speci c code information. All users then transmit their wideband signal within the same frequency and time channel. This thesis deals with the development of receivers for various CDMA systems. Digital signal processing plays a central role in this development. In recent literature, so-called multi-user receivers have become very popular. These receivers take into account the full structure of the multi-user interfer- ence (MUI), i.e., the interference originating from the other users. However, they have a rather high computational complexity. In the rst part of this the- sis, we ...

In this thesis novel implementation approaches for standardized and non-standardized ultra wide-band (UWB) systems are presented. These implementation approaches include signal processing algorithms to achieve processing of UWB signals in transceiver front-ends and in digital back-ends. A parallelization of the transceiver in the frequency-domain has been achieved with hybrid filterbank transceivers. The standardized MB-OFDM signaling scheme allows par- allelization in the frequency domain by distributing the orthogonal multicarrier modulation onto multiple units. Furthermore, the channel’s response to wideband signals has been parallelized in the frequency domain and the effects of the parallelization have been investi- gated. Slight performance decreases are observed, where the limiting effects are truncated sidelobes and filter mismatches in analog front-ends. Measures for the performance loss have been defined. For UWB signal generation, a novel broadband signal generation approach is presented. For that purpose, multiple digital-to-analog converters ...

It is well known that Ultra WideBand (UWB) transmission is inherently robust against small-scale-fading (SSF) that arises in multipath scattering environments, due to its large signal bandwidth. However, no model with a physical interpretation exists that relates the variations of received signal strength to the signal bandwidth and general channel parameters, like e.g. the average channel power delay profile. Such a model would be of relevance for e.g. system designers, who have to make tradeoffs between system aspects, like complexity and energy efficiency on one hand, and robustness against small-scale fading on the other hand. In this thesis, a model is presented that allows for such a tradeoff analysis, relating the average power delay profile parameters and signal bandwidth to the statistical properties of the SSF. Additionally, it is shown how the uncoded and coded BER of BPSK modulation can ...

The next generation communication devices are foreseen to not only support a large variety of applications, ranging from speech, audio and video graphics but also be able to maintain connection with many other devices (rather than a single base station) in di®erent changing environments. The aim of the dissertation is to analyze digital modulation and coding techniques for wireless communication systems in realistic transmission scenarios. Furthermore, an important objective of the dissertation is to explore the degrees of freedom that can make the wire- less communication systems overall more adaptive, thereby, resulting in systems that either consume less power for a given performance or o®er more perfor- mance for a given amount of average energy than conventional systems. The techniques/algorithms analyzed in the dissertation are versatile and suitable for both narrowband as well as wideband wireless communication systems for indoor ...

Traditional antenna performance descriptors such as input port impedance, radiation pattern or effective antenna length generally face strong frequency dependence. In this context the traditional narrowband approach to antenna design is no more appropriate for UWB antennas. Such antennas behave as spatial and temporal filters, distorting the radiated waveforms. Indeed, the radiated signal distortion is an inherent UWB antenna issue, usually assessed qualitatively. Consequently the need for a compact frequency and direction-independent antenna distortion descriptor was identified. For this purpose the first objective of the thesis is to define and analyze new direction-independent UWB antenna descriptors that should assess the antenna performance in terms of transmitted UWB pulse fidelity. As a second objective of the thesis, a critical analysis of the proposed UWB descriptors measurement methods is developed. Namely, spatially averaged fidelity (SAF) descriptors and radiation efficiency measurement methods in ...