The Waveform Distortion of UWB Pulse through Reflection from a Smooth Surface

Pulse distortion is an important characteristic of ultra- wideband (UWB) pulse. Although lots of papers have addressed the pulse distortion issue, incorporating the impacts of frequency dependence on pulse distortion appears to be novel. A theoretical reflection model based on geometrical optics is established in this paper. The distortion of second derivative Gaussian pulse caused by reflection from various materials is investigated. These materials are very common in indoor environments. Fresnel reflection coefficient in frequency domain and inverse Fourier transform are used to obtain the time-domain pulse waveform. The simulation result shows that non-linear amplitude attenuation leads to the pulse distortion, and non-linear phase distortion has little impacts on pulse distortion. It is also found that the energy of reflected electromagnetic field is very small compared with the incident pulse. These numerical results can be directly applied in channel modeling and receiver design.