An efficient synchronization scheme for digital UWB communication systems for biomedical applications

Wireless biomedical applications require low power operations for long, uninterrupted durations of use. In order to harness the low power characteristics of Ultra Wideband (UWB) systems, issues involving the synchronization of extremely short pulses have to be resolved as they surface as major bottlenecks of the design of such systems. The situation is particularly adverse in short range communication systems operating in dense indoor environments as employed in the biomedical field. In this paper, we present a simple power saving synchronization scheme extended upon a previously implemented spatial rake receiver structure. This scheme, which uses neither high speed ADCs nor conventional analog correlators, allows for significant reduction in receiver power consumption while achieving quick acquisition in the preamble stage under moderate signal to noise ratio (SNR) conditions, by exploiting favorable cross correlation properties of known Barker sequences. This is illustrated by appropriately adjusting the threshold value of the discrete correlation between received data and chosen sequences.