Performance evaluation of UWB signaling at mmWaves

Ultra-wideband (UWB) radios have the potential to achieve very high data rates. However, the coverage is limited over very short ranges, due to the tight limits imposed to the allowed transmission power by the worldwide spectrum regulation at microWaves. Recently, a very large bandwidth has been made available by worldwide regulation at mmWaves. Wide consensus is achieved on the future utilization of the spectral region around 60 GHz for multi-Gbps wireless LAN connectivity. Given the availability of a very large band, up to 7 GHz, mmWaves appear as the natural candidate for UWB transmissions. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the performance of impulse radio (IR)-UWB signalling when operating at mmWaves, i.e., around 60 GHz. The analysis is based on a semi-analytical approach, where the bit error rate (BER) for pulse position modulation (PPM) and pulse amplitude modulation (PAM) is analytically computed and averaged over the empirical probability density function of the signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) as obtained from a significant set of experimental impulse responses of the UWB indoor channel at mmWaves. These channel impulse responses have been collected through a measurement campaign in a modern office building at eight carrier frequencies spanning the band from 54 to 59 GHz and from 61 to 66 GHz. The results show a promising potential for mmWaves UWB radios.