Performance analysis of UWB impulse radar receiver using parallel IPCP

This paper considers a vehicle-borne target detection system for short range in which an UWB (Ultra Wideband) impulse radar is used. The UWB impulse radar uses a pulse with widths of less than nanosecond order. Therefore, many multipath returns are observed on the receiving side. An IPCP (Inter-Period Correction Processing) receiver that resolves complexity of the receiver caused by multiple paths has been proposed. However, the integration time of the correlator in the IPCP receiver is limited by the period of the transmission signal (code length) and affects the range measurement accuracy. This paper considers vehicle mounting for applications. In order to assure safety, a receiver is constructed with several IPCP receivers in parallel, so that the range measurement accuracy is improved. In addition, a receiver which reduces the complexity of threshold setting in the conventional IPCP receiver when several targets are detected is proposed. The outputs of these receivers are derived analytically and improvement of the range measurement accuracy is confirmed. Further, based on the analytical results, the output of each receiver is characterized and the relationship of the threshold, detection probability, and false error probability is derived. Finally, the characteristics of use of the receiver as a vehicle-mounted radar are evaluated by simulation. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electron Comm Jpn Pt 3, 90(7): 1–14, 2007; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/ecjc.20303