UWB Deterministic Channel Modeling

Abstract

Ultra wideband (UWB) technology is one of the most significant wireless technologies that can provide higher data rates required by short-range wireless communication. Operating in the 3.1-10.6 GHz band [1], UWB radio can provide different advantages like low power, high speed, good resolution, ground and wall penetrating capabilities, and robustness to multipath fading [2]. Because of these benefits, this technology has found applications in various fields like time of arrival (TOA) estimation [3], high precision indoor localization [4], implementing body area network (BAN) [5] or personal area network (PAN) [6], monitoring the human body [7], in-vehicle wireless communication [8], and other sensor network applications [9]. While employing short-duration pulses for communication between transmitter (Tx) and receiver (Rx), UWB technology provides a very large bandwidth that can prove useful for different communication applications. First, this chapter provides an overview of UWB concepts as well as UWB regulations and advantages. Further this chapter presents the basic understanding of UWB propagation channel and different advantages of time-domain (TD) analysis in comparison to the frequency-domain (FD) analysis. Next, UWB propagation is characterized in wireless scenarios made up of lossy materials. With diffraction as the main propagation mechanisms, the main emphasis will be put on analysis of pulse distortion that can potentially affect the communication system performance [10].