Ultra Wideband

Transceiver Design
By: Wafula Wanjala George
For: Bachelor Of Science In Electrical &
Electronic Engineering
University Of Nairobi
SUPERVISOR: Dr. Vitalice Oduol
EXAMINER: Dr. M.K. Gakuru
DATE: 28-05-2009

Presentation Outline
Introduction to UWB
u Project Objectives
u Types of UWB Transceivers
u IR-UWB: Transmitter Design
u IR-UWB: Channel Design
u IR-UWB: Receiver Design
u Simulation In MATLAB SIMULINK
u Applications
u Future Challenges
u

What is UWB?
Governed by the FCC
Definition: UWB is a modulated transmission
with:
more than 20% fractional bandwidth
Or,

at least 500 MHz of bandwidth.

The UWB spectrum is between 3.1 and 10.6 GHz.

Energy spectral density is limited to 41.3
dBm/MHz Bandwidth
3

UWB communications
consists of very short
pulses (Picoseconds)
transmitted over a large
spectrum at once

Compared to
narrowband RF and
spread spectrum,
UWB uses extremely
low power, yet
extremely wide
bandwidth
4

Advantages of UWB

Extremely difficult to intercept

High Data rate transmission
Less path loss
Better immunity to multipath loss
Availability of low cost transceiver
Low transmit power
Low interference
Potential in localisation
Low cost
5

Project Objectives
u
u
u

To study Ultra-wideband Communications system

To design a transceiver system based UWB
To demonstrate that the UWB transceiver works.

Types of UWB Transceiver

Impulse Radio (IR-UWB)
Uses extremely short pulses with duration of the order of
nanoseconds to transmit information
Short Pulses have very large bandwidth of the order of a few
GHz

Types of UWB Transceiver

Advantages of Impulse Radio UWB
With low duty cycle of pulses, the transmitter
power can be small
Carrier Modulation is not required
No need of RF power amplifier
Simple architecture
Robust to multipath fading
Offers great flexibility of the spectrum usage
Adaptive transceiver design can be used for
optimising system performance

Types of UWB Transceiver

Multi Carrier UWB
Whole 3.1-10.6 GHz bandwidth is split into 528 MHz sub bands

The fourth band is null to filter out the strong 802.11a

interference
Either single carrier or multi carrier modulation can be
employed in each sub- band
9

Types of UWB Transceiver

Advantages of Multi Carrier UWB
Multi-Carrier OFDM enables high rate
communication with inexpensive low power
receivers
It eliminates inter-symbol interference
Disadvantages of Multi-Carrier UWB
Complex architecture
Consumes more power
Up and down conversion is required
High sensitivity to frequency, clock and phase
inaccuracy
Non-linear amplification destroys the
orthogonality of OFDM

10

Transmitter Architecture
The transmitter architecture that was employed is as follows

It employs :

Pulse generator
Modulator
High Pass Amplifier
Bandpass Filter
Digital Baseband
Data Generation
Antenna
11

Transmitter Architecture
The transmitter architecture that was employed is as follows:
SRDs Pulse Generator
Step Recovery Diodes (SRD) or "snap off" diodes can be used to make very fast-rise
time pulses. Conventional diodes conduct when forward biased and shut off when
reverse biased. SRDs have a P-I-N structure, and charge is stored in the intrinsic layer
when the SRD is forward biased. This allows the SRD to continue to conduct when the
device is reverse biased. This reverse conduction continues until the charge is swept out
of the intrinsic layer; with the charge gone, the diode abruptly stops conducting and
"snaps off". The SRD presents low impedance during the forward/ reverse conduction
and transitions to high impedance when it snaps off.

BPSK Modulation
Binary Phase Shift Modulation is a form of digital phase modulation. It involves changing
the phase of the transmitted waveform instead of the frequency, these finite phase
changes representing digital data. With BPSK, the carrier undergoes two changes in
phase (two symbols) and can thus represent 1 binary bit of data per symbol.

UWB Antenna
A UWB antenna has some characteristics that are different compared to narrowband
antennas:
Wide bandwidth: in order to cover 3.1-5.1GHz band.
Matching: with pulse generator over the whole band.
Non-dispersive and low ringing: to preserve pulse shape.
Possibility to be integrated: can be used in a tag-system.
Directivity: in function of targeted applications
12

Transmitter Architecture

A diamond dipole antenna was used for the transmitter architecture

An ideal impulse UWB signal is as below, where Ai(t) is the amplitude of the pulse equal to Ep
,where Ep is the energy per pulse, p(t) is the received pulse shape with normalized energy,
and Tf is the frame repetition time. (A UWB frame is defined as the time interval in which one
pulse is transmitted.) We also define Tp to be the duration of the pulse. Note that the pulse
repetition rate is not necessarily equal to the inverse of the pulse width. In other words, the
duty cycle of the transmitted signal is almost always less than 1.

13

Receiver Architecture
The UWB receiver employs the following architecture

The receiver consists of:

RF Front End
ADC/Clock distribution
Digital Processing
Receiver Topology- Digital Leading Edge Detection

14

Receiver
Architecture
RF Front End
The RF Front End is composed of a series of broadband amplifiers, a
bandlimiting filter, a broadband variable gain amplifier/variable
attenuator, and a power divider. The LNA amplifies small input signals, is
made of a low noise figure (NF), high transition frequency, with an
amplification capability of 4 GHz, and provides at least a 60dB of total
voltage gain. To limit the reflections, a 3 dB attenuator was placed as an
isolation device. The bandpass filter bandlimits the incoming signal and
limits the input noise. The low pass filter that was used was a 3rd order
Butterworth design with a 600 MHz cut-off frequency whose work was to
filter the carrier frequency to retrieve the base band pulses.
ADC/CLOCK Distribution
The RF Front block is followed by a limiter, the Receiver design is a
Colonics Company design, in which the limiter is replaced by a MAX 108
by Maxim. The limiter acts as a power divider that sends the signal
through a series of delay lines to the ADC bank. The bank of ADCs and
clock distribution network which will be responsible for parallel sampling
the received UWB pulse.
Digital Processing
It must be capable of handling multiple data streams from the ADCs and
then demodulating the data in real time. In order to meet the design
objectives, the digital processing must also be reconfigurable, in order to
provide the flexibility demanded by a software radio design. A FPGA is
used

15

Receiver Architecture
Receiver Topology Digital Leading Edge Detection (DLED)
Threshold detectors, also known as leading edge detection (LED) receivers,
were some of the earliest and probably the simplest of all I-UWB
receivers. The LED receiver sets a threshold at the receiver, and any
incoming pulse that crosses the threshold is detected and demodulated.
The problem with the threshold reception technique is that noise spikes,
which happen to cross the threshold, will also be erroneously detected as
a data pulse (known as a "false alarm" or "false detection"). To mitigate
the problem of false detections, the receiver must continuously monitor
the input noise signal and adaptively set a threshold such that only a small
percentage of false detections will occur, similar to the constant false
alarm rate (CFAR) used in radar. To operate properly, the LED receiver
must use a device that is capable of responding to a very sharp change in
received voltage in a very short time span

16

SIMULATION IN MATLAB

The UWB transceiver was simulated as shown

The simulation has :

Transmitter

Channel

Receiver

17

SIMULATION IN MATLAB

Transmitter

Bernoulli Binary Generator

It generates random binary numbers using a Bernoulli distribution. The Bernoulli
distribution with parameter p produces zero with probability p and one with
probability

Buffer block
It redistributes the input samples to a new frame size. Buffering to a larger frame
size yields an output with a slower frame rate than the input.

BPSK Modulator Baseband

It modulates using binary phase shift keying method. The output is a baseband
representation of the modulated signal.

Transmitter Scatter Plot Scope

It displays scatter plots of a modulated signal, to reveal the modulation
characteristics, such as pulse shaping or channel distortions of the signal. The
parameter settings of this scope were set at -1.5 and 1.5 on the x-axis and y-axis
respectively.

Pad Block
It extends or crops the dimensions of the input by padding or truncating along its
columns, rows, columns and rows, or any dimension(s) you specify. It was modified
as pad signal field was placed at the beginning and the padding being done along
the columns with specified output rows at a value of one.
IFFT Block
It computes the inverse fast Fourier transform (IFFT) of each channel of a P-by-N or
length-P input.

18

SIMULATION IN MATLAB

Transmitter

Unbuffer Block
The Unbuffer block unbuffers an Mi-by-N frame-based input into a 1-by-N samplebased output. That is, inputs are unbuffered row-wise so that each matrix row
becomes an independent time-sample in the output.
Transmitter Spectrum Scope
The Spectrum Scope block computes and displays the periodogram of the input. The
input can be a sample-based or frame-based vector or a frame-based matrix. The
spectrum scope is used to display the transmitted UWB signal as shown .

19

SIMULATION IN MATLAB

UWB Channel

A Additive White Gaussian Noise Channel is used to model the propagation

properties of a UWB signal

The AWGN Channel block adds white Gaussian noise to a real or complex input signal.
When the input signal is real, this block adds real Gaussian noise and produces a real
output signal. When the input signal is complex, this block adds complex Gaussian
noise and produces a complex output signal.
The AWGN model is set up to allow variations in the SNR, which was the parameters
within the model were set up with the SNR equal to 30, number of bits per symbol
equal to 2, input signal power equal to one watt, and symbol period equal to 2
nanoseconds
Shannons Channel Capacity theorem
C = B log2 (1 + S\N)
where C = Maximum Channel Capacity (bits\sec)
B = Channel Bandwidth ( Hertz)
S = Signal Power (Watts)
N = Noise Power (Watts)
20

SIMULATION IN MATLAB

UWB Receiver

The receiver architecture had the following blocks:

FFT Block
It computes the fast Fourier transform (FFT) of each channel of a P-by-N or length-P
input, u. The parameter settings were set at table lookup in the twiddle factor
computation field and speed in the optimise table field. Its functionality is to get the
fast fourier transform of the received signal for proper demodulation of the signal.
The selector
It generates as output selected or reordered elements of an input vector, matrix, or
multidimensional signal. The Input type parameter was set to the type of signal
Matrix. The parameter dialog box and the block's appearance changed to reflect the
type of input that was selected.
To Frame Conversion
It passes the input through to the output and sets the output sampling mode to the
value of the Sampling mode of output signal parameter, which can be either Framebased or Sample-based.
BPSK Demodulator Baseband
It demodulates a signal that was modulated using the binary phase shift keying
method. The input is a baseband representation of the modulated signal. The BPSK
Demodulator parameter output type was set at bit and the constellation ordering was
set to gray code.

21

SIMULATION IN MATLAB

The received signal plus the AGWN is as shown below

Discussion and Analysis

The transceiver design is as implemented herein. It is from the simulation

results of the spectrum scope at the transmitter and receiver side that they
showed the actual functioning of the transceiver. The waveform from the
transmitter is the one actually received at the receiver side plus an AWGN, as
theory dictated. The simulated and theoretical discussions agree, thus the
project being a success

22

UWB APPLICATIONS

The following application illustrates UWB applications in Wireless Personal Area Network
(WPAN)

23

UWB APPLICATIONS

24

Future Challenges
u

Have to co-exist with the present and

possible future standards in the 3.1 to
10.6 GHz
Robustness and long term viability of this
technology needs to be determined
Feasibility for high level silicon integration
in order to yield low cost and low power
solution needs to be determined.

25

Summary
Defined and discussed the benefits of
UWB Technology
u Design of the UWB Transceiver
u FPGA is used for demodulation
u Simulation of the transceiver in
MATLAB was demonstrated
u UWB Applications was discussed
u

26

EUREKA

27