Performance evaluation of RAKE reception of ultra wideband signals over multipath channels from energy capture perspective

In this paper, we derive the SEP for time-hopping M-ary PPM (TH-MPPM) UWB communication systems as a function of captured SNR per symbol and simplify the results for TH-BPSK. For the TH-MPPM system, we incorporate the effect of modulation index (δ) on SEP. The results obtained give us way to evaluate the performance of RAKE reception of UWB signals in dense multipath channels from the energy capture perspective. We present more general results that can be applied for verification of RAKE implementations. We present simulation results using IEEE 802.15.3a UWB channel models for various pulsewidths. We evaluate the performance of optimum and ordinary all RAKE (ARAKE) and selective RAKE (SRAKE) receivers in different channel models (CM1 to CM3). We compare relative costs of simplifying various RAKE complexities. Conditioned on some parameters, we present an optimum pulse width for UWB communications while SRAKE is employed.