Analysis and Comparison of Inter-Symbol/Frame Interference in Pulsed DS- and Hybrid DS/TH-UWB Communications

Inter-symbol/frame interference analysis is presented for pulsed direct sequence (DS) and hybrid direct sequence time hopping (DS/TH) ultra-wideband (UWB) communications considering a frequency selective Nakagami fading channel. Following the analysis, error rate expressions are developed and performance comparison is presented for the systems. It is found that the performance of pulsed DS system may depend on pulse repetition rate (PRR), number of combined paths by Rake receiver and the channel profile in a kind of unpredictable manner. For low PRR, the DS system performs better than DS/TH irrespective of the channel profile. For medium to high PRR, DS and DS/TH systems may perform comparably in a channel with a single decaying profile. However, if the channel contains more than one decaying profiles like as in Saleh-Valenzuela model, the performance of DS may drastically degrade and perform worse than DS/TH at some values of PRRs. The performance of DS/TH is relatively less influenced by the shape of the channel profile. Theoretical results are verified by simulations.