Synchronization scheme for low duty cycle UWB impulse radio receiver

Ultra-wide band (UWB) communication shows great potential for low-power communication for wireless sensor or body area network (BAN) applications. In particular, noncoherent receivers can be implemented with very low complexity. However, impulse radio and low duty cycle signaling involve stringent requirements on timing recovery. Standard synchronization algorithms might not be applicable due to constraints on memory capacity, clock accuracy and the sampling frequency of the receiver. Therefore, we present a scheme for burst detection and joint frame and symbol synchronization where both transmitter and receiver respect the low-duty cycle requirements. Furthermore, a subsampling analog-to-digital converter with a free running clock is assumed to meet low-power constraints. Burst detection is based on correlation with a known synchronization sequence. For symbol synchronization digital reconstruction of the symbol timing is applied, based on an FIR interpolation filter. Finally, it can be seen from performance results with real measured BAN channels that the presented synchronization algorithm is very well suited for the use in such applications.