Rapid and Low-Complexity Synchronization for IR-UWB Receiver

Practical and low complexity implementation of receivers is of vital importance for the successful penetration of the ultra-wideband (UWB) technology. The role of a synchronization technique is essentially to determine the relative delay of the received signal with respect to a template signal in the receiver, and it is difficult to implement due to the ultra-fine time-resolvability of the UWB signal. In this paper, a new method for synchronization based on sliding correlation theory and energy detection is proposed, which can reduce the average acquisition time considerably. The algorithm is shown to have enhanced efficiency compared to the conventional serial search algorithm and the degradation in performance is limited. For binary PPM modulation, the key design parameter selections that minimize the BER are derived and analyzed. Simulations corroborate our results.