An Ultra-Wideband Impulse-Radio Communication Method and Transceiver

The present paper describes the physical layer of an ultra-wideband impulse radio (UWB-IR) communication system, together with its implementation in a fully integrated transceiver. The objective of this work was to design and test a low-power radio communication system for medium data-rate, short-range communication. The system is based on frequency hopping on-off keying modulation (FH-OOK) for transmission, combined with a non-coherent demodulation scheme in the receiver. A fast-phase synchronization method for the receiver was also developed. A single chip transmitter/receiver integrated circuit (IC), incorporating the radio frequency system and the base-band signal processing chain, was produced using a 0.13 ¿m CMOS process. Test results showed the maximum data rate for the radio interface to be 20 Mb/s, and a reliable link was obtained at a distance of 5 m, without recourse to error-correction convolutional codes. Maximum power consumption was less than 20 mW. The simple hardware architecture, low power consumption and high achievable data rate make this system suitable for small, portable battery-powered devices.