An Impulse Radio UWB hardware demonstrator for Body Area Network communication

An Ultra-Wideband hardware demonstrator based on Impulse Radio for Local Body Area Network applications is presented. The system includes an UWB transmitter, an UWB receiver and a microcontroller board. It operates in the frequency range from 3.1 - 5.0 GHz with a maximum data rate of 10 MBit/s. The performance of the system is shown in terms of BER. It was tested for different antennas and distances between transmitter and receiver for line-of-sight conditions in a laboratory room. Using a PIFA as transmitter and a DRA antenna as a receiver antenna an uncoded BER better than 10^-3 was observed for distances up to 4.5 m. Furthermore, the robustness of the system against fading is shown in time and frequency domain.