Design and ASIC implementation of an IR-UWB-baseband transceiver for IEEE 802.15.4a

Using UWB for wireless short range, low rate communication is attracting growing interest due to its low power consumption and very high bandwidth. Moreover, it is able to offer accurate localization in the range of few centimeters. Considering these qualities, it is desirable to design an IR-UWB transceiver which consumes as small power as possible when it is applied for battery driven wireless sensors. For this reason, an IR-UWB transceiver based on the standard IEEE.802.15.4a was investigated in this paper with particular emphasis on its implementation, power consumption and area need for both FPGA and ASIC solutions. This paper presents results obtained with real hardware.