Joint Pulse and Symbol Level Acquisition of UWB Receivers

Synchronization is a key issue for ultra-wideband (UWB) radios. Most UWB receivers require a sub-nanosecond level synchronization accuracy for pulse detection, usually leading to a very long acquisition time. In this paper, we propose a novel acquisition algorithm for UWB receivers, which jointly achieves pulse acquisition (PA) and symbol timing in a short time. Novel and practical error-resistant approaches are developed to keep the false alarm (FA) rate under a desired low level. Detailed analysis based on finite state machine and flow graph theory is carried out to evaluate its acquisition performance. Comparison with the PA-only case is made, illustrating the effectiveness of our joint approach. Simulations corroborate our theoretical results.