Symbol timing estimation in ultra wideband communications

This paper takes on a cyclostationary approach to recover timing of ultra-wideband (UWB) transmissions over rich multipath environments. It is demonstrated that timing dependent cyclic statistics exist without resorting to oversampling, due to the symbol repetition pattern inherent to UWB modulation. Based on the received signal's second-order cyclic statistics, non-data-aided time offset estimation algorithms are developed. Timing acquisition relies only on frame rate samples, while low-complexity tracking utilizes pulse rate samples. Both acquisition and tracking schemes are tolerant to UWB channel fading, and additive stationary (possibly colored) noise.