Adaptive synchronization for non-coherent UWB receivers

Ultra-wideband (UWB) radio transmits data using sub-nanosecond pulses with a very low duty-cycle. It is a promising candidate for short-range communications in dense multipath environments. However, UWB systems have to cope with great design challenges, including difficulties on synchronization, template signal design, and multipath energy combining. The UWB differential scheme with a non-coherent receiver offers a way to solve these problems, but may experience performance degradation due to inadequate synchronization knowledge. In this paper a novel adaptive synchronization algorithm for UWB non-coherent receivers is proposed, which adaptively improves on partial synchronization information until frame-level synchronization is achieved. The algorithm requires only tens of symbol durations, which is orders of magnitude less than that of the coherent receiver. Performance enhancement is observed through both theoretical analysis and simulations.