A Practical Link Budget for I-UWB Systems

This paper proposes a practical alternative to the traditional link budget approach for impulse-based UWB systems (I-UWB), which is based on the Friis formula. The proposed link budget approach overcomes the narrowband limitations of the traditional link budget by proposing the use of an antenna-pulse coupling gain. This gain is specific for an antenna tx-rx pair and the I-UWB pulse used and can be easily determined by taking a frequency or a time domain measurement. The paper introduces the approach and then verifies its accuracy by presenting the results of several measurements at distances ranging from 1 to 20 m.