An Energy-Detection Impulse-Radio UWB Receiver

In this work, the implementation of a 7 GHz non-coherent energy-detection impulse-radio UWB receiver is discussed for a pulse-position modulation scheme. The radio-frequency chain starts with a repeated filter-amplifier structure with 47.2 dB gain and 7.2 dB noise figure. The IR-UWB signal is detected using an envelope detector with 500 MHz bandwidth and two time-interleaved broadband integrator circuits. Synchronization, demodulation, and error correction are carried out in real-time in the digital baseband, implemented in an FPGA. The receiver achieves a typical communication range of 12 m for an indoor scenario using a standard-compliant custom integrated circuit IR-UWB transmitter and a custom protocol, whereby 30 pulse-position encoded symbols are combined into one frame. The frame error rate has been measured at the target application’s frame rate of 256 frame/s and indicates a sensitivity level of −99.1 dBm at a frame error rate of 1 × 10−3.