UWB impulse radio receiver based on single bit quantization

Impulse Radio (IR) modulation is perceived to be a practical means of exploiting the multi-gigahertz bandwidth available for UWB links. However, the RMS delay spreading of indoor channels relative to the transmitted pulse width is typically very large such that several hundred signal samples are required to be quantized and processed for each received pulse. To realize a relatively low power low-complexity receiver of satisfactory performance in low signal to noise ratio environments, signal sampling based on single bit quantization is proposed which is readily realizable at gigahertz rates with modest power consumption. In this paper, the architecture and performance of a coherent IR receiver based on single bit quantization will be analyzed from the perspectives of Rake receiver processing, channel estimation and signal detection. This paper demonstrates that single bit quantization results in a modest manageable performance penalty relative to linear multi-bit sampling. This penalty is readily justifiable in light of the significant reduction in overall receiver complexity.