Energy-Efficient and Mui-Free Synchronization for UWB Based WSNS

Synchronization is a challenging task in ultra wideband (UWB) communications, and becomes more difficult in UWB based wireless sensor networks (WSNs) in the presence of multi-user interference (MUI). For such a system, we develop a synchronization scheme including a novel design of transmitted reference (TR) signal model to avoid MUI and an energy-efficient synchronization algorithm. The synchronization signal of cluster-head is designed to be TR symbols with normal reference pulse and the interfering signal of common neighbour nodes is designed to be TR symbols with alternant anti-polar reference pulse, thus the MUI-free operation is obtained. Furthermore, the synchronization algorithm employs sample mean and energy detection relying on the periodicity in the mean of synchronization signal. Theoretic analysis and simulative results prove that the proposed scheme is both reliable and scalable