This paper deals with the small-scale fading distribution for UWB channels in the absence and presence of human bodies in indoor line-of-sight (LOS) environments and performance analysis of UWB systems considering the small-scale fading distribution. To obtain small-scale fading statistics, the channel measurements are performed in five representative environments that have different structure and size while locating the receiver (Rx) antenna on 49 (7×7 grid) local points with a fixed transmitter (Tx) antenna in each environment. The measured channel data are processed by a vector network analyzer and the target frequency bands range from 3 to 4.6GHz. From the measured data, we find the best fitted channel model among several typical theoretical distribution models such as Lognormal, Nakagami, and Weibull distributions, showing good agreement with the empirical channel data. We analyze the amplitude variation of the small-scale fading distribution in the absence and presence of human bodies. The results show that the small-scale fading statistics are best described by Weibull distribution and the two parameters of the distribution that determine the shape and the scale of the distribution depend on whether or not human bodies exist. We modeled and analyzed two parameters at different excess delays for all environments. Based on the measured small-scale fading distribution, this paper deals with the performance of UWB system using Rake receivers and also compares the performance with the existing channel model. The results suggest that the small-scale fading distribution in the absence and the presence of human bodies in indoor LOS environments should be considered when assessing the performance of UWB systems.

In this paper, we propose a genetic algorithm (GA) based equalization approach for direct sequence ultra-wideband (DS-UWB) wireless communication systems, where the GA is combined with a RAKE receiver to combat the inter-symbol interference (ISI) due to the frequency selective nature of UWB channels for high data rate transmission. The proposed GA based equalizer outperforms significantly the RAKE and the RAKE-minimum mean square error (MMSE) receivers according to results obtained from intensive simulation work. The RAKE-GA receiver also provides bit-error-rate (BER) performance very close to that of the optimal RAKE-maximum likelihood detection (MLD) approach, while offering a much lower computational complexity.

In a Direct-Sequence/Spread-Spectrum (DS/SS) system, a RAKE receiver is used to improve a bit error rate (BER) performance. The RAKE receiver can collect more signal energy through independent paths and achieve path diversity. The RAKE receiver obtains further diversity gain through fractional sampling. However, the power consumption of the RAKE receiver increases in proportion to a sampling rate and does not always maximize the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Therefore, sampling rate selection schemes have been proposed to reduce the average sampling rate without degrading the BER. These schemes select the tap positions and the sampling rate depending on channel conditions and the power consumption can be reduced. In this paper, sampling rate selection schemes for the DS/SS system are investigated through an experiment since there have been no numerical results through an experiment. Numerical results show that the power consumption can be reduced even through the experiment without the degradation of the BER.

This paper proposes a hybrid multiband (MB) ultra wideband (UWB) system with direct sequence (DS) spreading. The theoretical error analysis for the DS-MB-UWB multiple access system with Rake receiver in the presence of multipath and narrowband interference is developed. The developed theoretical framework models the multiple access interference (MAI), multipath interference (MI) and narrowband interference for the designed UWB system. It is shown that the system error performance corresponding to the combining effects of these interference can be accurately modeled and calculated. Monte Carlo simulation results are provided to validate the accuracy of the model. Additionally, it is found that narrowband interference can be mitigated effectively in the multiband UWB system by suppressing the particular UWB sub-band co-existing with the interfering narrowband signal. A typical improvement of 5 dB can be achieved with 75% sub-band power suppression. On the other hand, suppression of UWB sub-band is also found to decrease frequency diversity, thus facilitating the increase of MAI. In this paper, the developed model is utilized to determine the parameters that optimize the UWB system performance by minimizing the effective interference.

Combining transmission of ultra wideband pulses, organized in blocks, with the inclusion of cyclic prefixing pulses yields a pulsewidth periodic signal at the receiver. Although unknown, this signal fits perfectly the diversity exploitive architecture of a RAKE receiver. Aiming to profit from this signal arrangement, we propose a pulse shape modulation system employing a RAKE receiver that estimates this periodic signal during a training interval and uses the estimated values for detection of data symbols. Our proposal relies on the invariability of the multipath propagation channel during the transmission of a UWB packet, the adequate application of the cyclic prefix, and the fact that different transmitted pulses result in different periodic signals at the receiver. This system is equivalent to transforming the multipath nature of the UWB propagation channel into a multichannel digital communications affected solely by additive noise. Our proposal is important because it ameliorates the performance of a pulse shape modulation RAKE receiver. On the other hand, the cost of our proposed system resides in the inefficiencies product of the cyclic prefix inclusion.

The performances of a PCTH-based communication UWB system with diversiform modulation schemes are compared on the classic AWGN channel propagation and the realistic IEEE-UWB channel model. By employing different versions of modulation at the transmitters, the performances of an optimal receiver and a Rake receiver with various combining schemes are studied in this paper. The numerical results for several compared cases illustrate the tradeoff between transmitter diversity and receiver complexity. It is shown that the actual performance of the PAM-PCTH scheme can be better in both kinds of channel propagation. We also find that the PCTH-based UWB system with the Rake receiver has better performance than the conventional proposal for overcoming the multipath propagation effects in the UWB indoor environment.

In this paper, sampling rate selection diversity (SRSD) scheme for Direct-Sequence/Spread-Spectrum (DS/SS) is proposed. In DS/SS communication systems, oversampling may be employed to increase the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). However, oversampling enlarges the power consumption because signal processing of the receiver has to be carried out at a higher clock rate. Higher sampling rate does not always maximize the SNR. In the proposed SRSD scheme, the power consumption can be reduced by selecting the optimum sampling rate depending on the characteristics of the channel. The proposed SRSD scheme can also reduce the BER more than the conventional oversampling scheme under certain channel conditions.

In this letter, we evaluate the M-BOK based DS-UWB system that uses a space-time block code (STBC) with Rake receivers in the WPAN environment. The conventional DS-UWB system doesn't ensure receiver reliability for the WPAN envrionment due to multipath fading, while the proposed M-BOK based DS-UWB system employing a STBC can overcome multipath fading causing attenuation of receiver reliability in the WPAN environment. In addition, a simple diversity combining receiver, called PRake receiver, shows the performance similar to that of a ARake receiver using the ideal diversity combining and reduces the receiver complexity.

The performance of a feedback-type adaptive array antenna (AAA) system placed only at a base station (BS) in an FDD/DS-CDMA system remains insufficiently clear. We evaluate the performance of this system by considering the effect of a rake receiver, spacing distance between antennas, the maximum Doppler frequency (fd), and control delay time (Td) on BER performance. In this system, the mobile station (MS) determines optimum weights of antenna elements and sends them back to BS as feedback information. We assume that the optimum weights are not quantized. Thereby, we estimate the performance degradation of 3GPP transmit diversity system, where the feedback information is quantized using a few bits. Computer simulation results show that the rake receiver achieves better BER performance because of the time diversity effect with rake receiver. The AAA with a wide antenna spacing gives high diversity gain for the received signals. For a high value of fd Td, BER performance becomes worse because weighting factors cannot follow the changing speed of channel characteristics. The degradation in performance of a 3GPP system is clarified.

Error performance of DS-CDMA is discussed over independent Rayleigh faded multipath channel employing selective Rake (SRake) receiver. Simple-to-evaluate and accurate error probabilities are given following Holtzman's simplified improved Gaussian approximation (SIGA). Comparing with SIGA, the validity of standard Gaussian approximation (SGA) is then verified. It is shown that SGA is accurate for SRake until some number of combined paths beyond which it becomes optimistic. It is also shown that as compared to single user performance, the SRake performance is relatively less degraded by multiple access interference (MAI) while the number of combined paths is small.

In this paper we present a novel method for improving RAKE receiver reception in UWB systems. Due to the fact that practical pulses that can be produced for UWB-IR (Ultra Wideband-Impulse Radio) may occupy a longer time than the typical multipath resolution of the actual UWB channel, multiple channel components may arrive within this typical pulse width. Performance degradation may occur due to the resulting intrapulse (overlapping received pulses) interference. We here propose an adaptive, pilot aided RAKE receiver for UWB communications in the multipath environment. The proposed system estimates the actual received signal with intrapulse interference in each RAKE finger using projections onto a Hadamard-Hermite subspace. By exploiting the orthogonality of this subspace it is possible to decompose the received signal so as to better match the template waveform and reduce the effects of intrapulse interference. By using the projections onto this subspace, the dimension of the received signal is effectively increased allowing for adaptive correlator template outputs. RAKE receivers based on this proposal are designed which show significant performance improvement and require less fingers to achieve required performance than their conventional counterparts.

In this paper, we improve the performance analysis of the Rake receiver for the DS-CDMA forward link using long random spreading sequences (RSS's) by more accurately evaluating the correlation between the various interference terms. We also extend the analysis to the case of short (periodic) RSS. The accuracy of the expressions obtained in our analysis is verified by computer simulation. We show that for a given normalized spreading factor, the bit error rate (BER) performance of the Rake receiver is the same for BPSK and QPSK data modulation. We also show that when the channel delay spread is smaller than a data symbol duration, the CDMA receiver has similar BER performance for long and short RSS's. However, for large delay spread, the employment of short RSS's may result in severe performance degradation.

In this paper, we consider a mobile system consisting of a single isolated circular cell with K independent users simultaneously sharing the channel using binary DS-CDMA to establish a full duplex channel with the base station. Both coherent and differential detection RAKE receivers with Maximal Ratio Combining (MRC) techniques are considered. The performance of two uplink/downlink receivers in Nakagami wideband fading channel is studied. Our approach relies on the use of total instantaneous interference power calculations instead of the use of average power approximations. We analyzed and derived new exact formulae for bit error probabilities for the considered system, and presented a set of numerical results both for the exact formulae and Gaussian approximation. The performance comparisons suggest that the exact formulae provide superior performance to Gaussian approximation especially at low number of users and either high fading parameters of the desired user or low fading parameters of the MAIs.

In this paper, the bit error rate (BER) and the outage probability are presented for a maximal ratio combining (MRC) two-dimensional (2D)-RAKE receiver operating in a correlated frequency-selective Nakagami-m fading environment with multiple access interference. A simple approximated probability distribution function of the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) is derived for the receiver with multiple correlated antennas and RAKE branches in arbitrary fading environments. The combined effects of spatial and temporal diversity order, average received signal-to-noise ratio, the number of multiple access interference, angular spread, antennae spacing and multi-path Nakagami-m fading environment on the system performance are illustrated. Numerical results indicate that the performance of the 2D-RAKE receiver depends highly on the operating environment and antenna array configuration. The performance can be improved by increasing the spatio-temporal diversity gains and antenna spacing.

Performance of selective Rake (SRake) receiver is evaluated for direct sequence ultra wideband (DS-UWB) communications considering an independent Rayleigh channel having exponentially decaying power delay profile (PDP). BEP performances are shown. The results obtained are compared with similar results in a channel having flat PDP. Assumption of a flat PDP is found to predict the optimum spreading bandwidth to be lower and sub-optimum operating performance beyond optimum spreading bandwidth to be severely worse than that is achievable in a channel having exponentially decaying PDP by employing an SRake receiver having fixed number of combined paths. Optimum spreading bandwidth for SRake in a channel having exponentially decaying PDP is shown to be much larger than the one in a channel having flat PDP; that is specifically a good-news for UWB communications. Effects of partial band interference are also investigated. Interference is found to be less effective in exponentially decaying PDP.

In this paper, the closed-form expressions of signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) and the outage probability are derived for a maximal ratio combining (MRC) two-dimensional (2-D)-RAKE receiver with imperfect power control in a frequency-selective Nakagami fading channel. The impact of power control error (PCE) on the performance of the receiver is analyzed for all kinds of fading environments. The results of numerical derivation and simulation indicate that the performance of 2-D-RAKE receivers degrades due to imperfect power control. But when PCE is not serious, increasing the number of antennae and temporal diversity order can compensate for the performance loss. The exact performance improvement due to space-time processing varies with the PCE and the fading environment.

This paper presents architecture design, FPGA implementation, and measurement results of a real-time signal processing circuit for WCDMA uplink baseband receiver. To enhance uplink signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) performance, a four-element antenna array and a four-finger Rake combiner are integrated in the proposed receiver. Moreover, a low-complexity beamforming architecture using a correlator-based beam searcher, a decision-directed carrier synchronization loop, and a matched-filter based channel estimator is also designed. Simulations are based on the standard Doppler-fading scalar channel models provided by 3GPP and an extension to vector channel models that specify angle of arrival for each path is also made for beamformer simulation. Simulation and hardware emulation results show that the proposed architecture meets the specified requirements. In addition, this architecture, with its correlator-based beamformer weights, achieves such performance improvement with relatively low hardware complexity.

It is well known that some of urban man-made noises can be characterized by a wideband impulsive noise (pure impulsive noise). The presence of this pure impulsive noise may significantly degrade the wireless digital transmission performance. As the data rate becomes higher and the radio bandwidth becomes wider, the performance degradation due to pure impulsive interference may become larger. In this paper, the DS-CDMA transmission performance in the presence of pure impulsive interference is theoretically analyzed. First, the BER expressions are derived for DS-CDMA with antenna diversity and Rake combining in a frequency selective fading channel. Then, the numerical computation based on Monte-Carlo method is performed to evaluate the BER performance. Two types of error floor are observed: one is due to impulsive interference and the other due to the multi access interference (MAI). It is found that the error floor due to impulsive interference becomes larger as the area of impulse and the error floor is linearly proportional to the impulse occurrence rate. Furthermore, it is found that the antenna diversity and Rake combining do not help to reduce the error floor caused by impulsive interference and that the influence of impulsive interference can be negligible when the channel is limited by the MAI (i.e., large number of users are in communication).

The pre-Rake system is known as a technique in TDD DS/CDMA system to reduce the mobile complexity and achieve the same BER performance like Rake receiver. The pre-Rake system itself is not optimum, since the channel impulse responses of uplink and downlink are slightly different in TDD system, so the signal- to-noise ratio (SNR) can be maximized with a matched filter based Rake receiver, which has not been considered in the conventional pre-Rake system. Furthermore pre-Rake system is sensitive to the Doppler frequency. Even though the pre-Rake system has the ability to suppress other user interference, it is not efficient to maximize the received signal in high Doppler frequency. However, Rake combiner is utilized for the detection method in our proposed system. So the maximized signal can keep the orthogonality better than the pre-Rake system and our proposed system can compensate the Doppler frequency effect. From these reasons, our system achieves better BER performance than that of the pre-Rake system with increasing the number of users in high Doppler frequency.

A unified view of RAKE reception is proposed which models a RAKE receiver as an antenna array. This unified view provides valuable insight to the signal environment under RAKE reception. Based on this view, an optimum combining scheme for RAKE receivers is proposed for the downlink of multi-code W-CDMA systems. In multi-code scenarios, the presence of inter-code interference causes severe performance degradation. The antenna array model suggests that enhancement can be achieved by increasing the receiver's degrees of freedom which is defined as the number of RAKE fingers and employs an appropriate combining scheme. The conventional maximum-ratio combining scheme is excluded since it is not capable of exploiting the increased degrees of freedom. In contrast, the proposed combining scheme provides better interference suppression when the degrees of freedom are increased. Numerical results obtained show that the proposed scheme provides very promising performance.