Performance of coherent and non-coherent receivers of UWB communication

Ultra-wideband (UWB) technology is currently investigated as one viable solution for high capacity short range indoor systems, because of its robustness in dense multipath environment, low cost and low power implementation, and the high bit rates achievable. In this paper we present the performance of coherent and non-coherent UWB receivers and especially for LDR-UWB systems with one of the most complicated application scenarios, under a realistic propagation environment, that takes into account also the effect of path-dependent pulse distortion. As far as coherent receivers are concerned, both maximal ratio combining (MRC) and equal gain combining (EGC) techniques are analyzed, considering a limited number of estimated paths.