System Design and Implementation of a Suboptimal UWB Testbed

Abstract

This paper outlines an ongoing ultra-wideband (UWB) testbed project and discusses design and implementation issues. The project is motivated by the need for low-complexity UWB transceivers for a wide range of applications, and by the intention to study and validate new concepts/ideas on a practical platform. The testbed is built using off-the-shelf components and is designed to be flexible enough to accommodate a number of features/functions. For the baseline testbed, energy detection is chosen as a low-complexity reception technique which eliminates the need for channel estimation and precise synchronization. Key items associated with system design and prototyping, such as pulse generator and initial timing acquisition, etc., are discussed. Board level design and implementation issues, including several challenging ones such as automatic gain control (AGC), high-speed analog-to-digital (A/D) converter, and adaptive thresholding, are reported. In addition, further work to advance the testbed is highlighted in the paper.