Synchronization of Multiple UWB Piconets

Timing synchronization is known to affect critically the performance of all coherent communication systems. Its effects are particularly pronounced in contemporary wireless technologies including ultra-wideband radios and wireless sensor networks, where cooperative or ad hoc access is challenged by arbitrary asynchronism, intersymbol interference, receiver noise, as well as interand intra-piconet interference arising from concurrently communicating nodes. To cope with these challenges, the present paper introduces piconet-specific synchronization patterns and simple averaging operations at the receiving ends, which enable low complexity timing acquisition through energy detection and demodulation by matching to a synchronized aggregate template. Pattern sequences are designed for both training-based and blind operation. Either way, the idea behind these designs is to periodically increase the transmit-power of each piconet’s synchronizing node with a period characteristic of each piconet. Performance of the novel synchronization protocols is tested with simulations conforming to an ultra-wideband wireless personal area network (WPAN) setup.