An analytical method for calculating the bit error rate performance of rake reception in UWB multipath fading channels

The bit error rate performance of Rake reception of impulse radio ultra-wide bandwidth signals over the IEEE 802.15.3a channel models is evaluated. Instead of using Gaussian approximation for the probability density function of the total disturbance which includes the multi-user interference and the background additive white Gaussian noise, two new models dubbed the "composite lognormal-Gaussian" and the "composite lognormal-Laplacian" are proposed for modeling the multi-user interference and shadowing in ultra-wide bandwidth multipath fading channels. Tractable formulae for bit error rate evaluation of Rake reception in ultra-wide bandwidth multipath channels are derived for both models. Numerical results indicate that these formulae predict the bit error rate performance with good accuracy, and can be rapidly and easily evaluated using commonplace computer resources.