Impact of multipath propagation on impulse radio UWB autocorrelation receivers

Abstract

The autocorrelation function of the channel's response to an ultra wideband (UWB) pulse determines the interframe-interference (IFI) in transmitted reference UWB systems employing autocorrelation receiver (AcR) front-ends. The statistical properties of this autocorrelation function were previously derived by the authors, i.e., expressions have been given for the mean and covariance of the correlator outputs in terms of channel parameters. In this paper, these previous results are validated by means of channel measurement data, which allows conclusions on the importance of the various components of a UWB channel model for an AcR in presence of inter-symbol-interference or multiple-access-interference. It is demonstrated that a model representing the received prototype pulse-shape, an exponentially decaying power delay profile plus a line-of-sight component, and a homogeneous ray arrival process can largely represent the impact of multipath propagation on the AcR.