Low power UWB transceivers for ISI limited environments: Design and performance verification

Recently, we proposed an FCC compliant, ultra low power UWB transceiver based on binary pulse position modulation (BPPM) and a symbol-wise energy detector (ED) . By means of a rigorous low duty cycle operation of 1% at a peak data rate of 50 Mbps, it features an average data rate of 500 kbps with a total average power below 1 mW. In this work, this symbol-wise ED is supplemented by a post-detector based on maximum likelihood sequence estimation (MLSE) which facilitates communication in inter-symbol interference (ISI) limited environments. A low complexity Viterbi detector, its metrics, as well as the required channel estimation is presented in a form which allows for direct implementation. Based on a complexity analysis, the additional power required by the post-detector is estimated. For practical scenarios, the overall transceiver power is still around 1 mW. Functionality of the modem design is verified by performance results obtained from an over-the-air testbed, which was operated in an ISI limited industrial environment.