TR-UWB (Transmitted Reference-Ultra Wide Band) systems have low system complexity since they transmit data with the corresponding reference signals and demodulate the data through correlation using these received signals. However, the BER (Bit Error Rate) performance in the conventional TR-UWB systems is sensitive to the SNR (Signal-to-Noise Ratio) of the reference templates used in the correlator. We propose an improved recursive transceiver structure that effectively minimizes the BER for TR-UWB systems by increasing the SNR of reference templates.

A semi-coherent multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) scheme, which only requires one of its receivers to operate coherently while others can be non-coherent, is proposed. In this scheme, the information symbols at the non-coherent receivers are estimated with the aid of a coherent receiver through a covariance estimator, thus allowing signals to be decoded coherently in the final stage. Results show that the proposed system is able to provide performance on par with that of the more complicated fully coherent MIMO systems.

A semi-coherent technique for low-complexity frequency offset estimation is presented. The proposed estimation is based on discrete-time Fourier transform (DTFT). Since residual frequency offset can be compensated by channel estimation, frequency offset can be estimated only coarsely. We take advantage of the relationship between frequency resolution and accumulation period in DTFT in deriving the coarse estimator. Based on that, a novel method to balance the coherent and the non-coherent accumulation for frequency offset estimation is proposed. The proposed algorithm has low latency and complexity so that it is particularly suitable for packet traffic. The semi-coherent structure of the proposed algorithm is also scalable so that it can be used for both bursty and continuous traffic.