Energy characteristics of UWB channel models applied to system design

The propagation of ultra-wideband (UWB) signals is a critical issue, which strongly impacts and even jeopardizes system costs and applications. This paper proposes a complete overview of energy distribution in UWB IEEE channel models. At first, realistic large scale parameters, such as path loss or fading margin, are considered for an accurate link budget analysis. Then, the energy repartition in the channel is modeled so as to specify optimal integration windows and detection performances in non-coherent receiver architectures based on energy collection for both communication and ranging requirements. Moreover, the expected voltage at antenna is analyzed in order to define the receiver sensitivity as a function of range. At last, we focus on auto and cross correlation of channel impulse responses for the purpose of estimating the multi-user capability. For each of the investigated items, some illustrating samples are provided and major implications for real UWB systems are derived and discussed.