An Improved Rapid Timing Acquisition for UWB Signals

Synchronization is a critical factor in most communication systems, especially in Ultra-wideband (UWB) transmission. The difficulty of synchronization is accentuated in UWB due to the fact that the information-bearing waveforms are impulse-like and have low power. Moreover, the dense multipath channel, through which these low-power narrow pulses propagate, is unknown at the receiver during the synchronization stage. An improved rapid timing acquisition is concerned for ultra-wideband (UWB) communications operating in a dense multipath environment. The timing algorithm is proposed that exploits the rich multipath diversity only relying on simple integrate-and-dump operations over symbol-rate samples. The proposed algorithm reduces considerably the implementation complexity and acquisition time. Simulations testing our modified scheme in UWB settings confirm its high potential for deployment.