Joint Symbol and ToA Estimation for Iterative Transmitted Reference Pulse Cluster UWB System

In the impulse radio ultra-wideband (UWB) literature, a transmitted reference pulse cluster (TRPC)-based non-coherent receiver is proposed to avoid the requirement of a wideband analog delay-line-based receiver. However, the TRPC receiver is effected by inter-pulse interference (IPI) and reduced energy transmission efficiency due to the transmission of reference pulses. In this paper, we propose an iterative TRPC (ITRPC) receiver to improve the performance of a conventional TRPC receiver by considering a blockwise data symbol detection. The ITRPC receiver estimates a new reference signal from the data pulses of the block. The estimated new reference signal in the ITRPC receiver reduces the effect of noise and IPI, which results in the improved performance. Furthermore, the single reference pulse either in a frame or a whole data symbol block is transmitted in the proposed ITRPC structure, which enhances the data rate and energy transmission efficiency of the system. The performance of the ITRPC receiver is analyzed for the binary-phase-shift-keying-modulated UWB system in standard IEEE 802.15Aa channels in the presence of additive white Gaussian noise.