Robust detection of ultra-wideband signals in non-Gaussian noise

A robust receiver is proposed for time-hopping pulse-position-modulation impulse radio systems transmitting over frequency-selective ultra-wideband channels, which aims to remove large-amplitude outliers that occur due to impulsive noise. The proposed system contains a rake structure for collecting the signal energy, which is dispersed over a large number of paths as a result of the wide channel bandwidth. Before the paths are merged via maximal ratio combining, they are passed through nonlinearities; to trim the outlier noise components. The robust receiver so designed is shown to outperform the conventional linear rake receiver that consists of only matched filters at its fingers.