Performance Analysis of Time Reversal UWB Communication with Non-coherent Energy Detector

Abstract

Non-coherent receivers, such as energy detectors (ED), are the simplest and the most practical alternatives to coherent receivers for low-rate and low-complexity applications in ultra-wideband (UWB) systems. However, these advantages are achieved at the expense of non-negligible performance degradation. One solution to improve the performance is to make use of time reversal (TR) technique. In this study, the performance of TR technique with non-coherent ED is analyzed in UWB systems. First, we derive an approximate analytical formula for the error probability of TR-ED which is based on tapped-delay line (TDL) channel model. Next, we theoretically and by simulations analyze the optimum integration interval which maximizes the performance of TR-ED. The results show that TR technique, by reducing the integration interval, considerably improves the performance compared to the conventional ED scheme.