Robust frequency-domain channel estimation and detection for ultra-wideband signals under non-Gaussian noise

In this paper, robust channel estimation and detection is considered for impulse radio ultra-wideband systems (UWB) subject to non-Gaussian noise and a frequency-domain receiver is proposed. In the proposed receiver, robust recursive least square algorithm is used for channel estimation and the least favorable density approach is employed within the detector module. A convergence analysis is presented for the robust frequency-domain estimator and an error performance analysis is provided for the robust detector. Then the bit-error rate (BER) performance of the proposed frequency domain receiver is evaluated via computer simulations. The receiver is shown to outperform the linear receiver architecture that is designed to be optimum under additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) substantially under non-Gaussian noise without any significant additional cost in complexity. It is also shown that the frequency-domain channel estimator that is inherently robust to channel statistics performs better than its time-domain counterpart especially in non-line-of-sight channels.