A Solution to the Non-Ideal Delay Line Problem in Transmitted Reference Pulse Cluster Schemes for UWB Communications

The conventional transmitted reference (TR) technique in ultra wide-band (UWB) communications has provided a springboard for a lot of studies, and a TR pulse cluster (TRPC) structure was proved to have robust performance. Most of TR and TRPC related studies hitherto are based on the assumption that the delay lines (DLs) in their schemes are ideal. However, the group delay ripple (GDR) of nonideal DLs triggered by practical imperfect factors at implementation causes an unexpected distortion in both TR and TRPC UWB systems, and there are few studies so far. In this article, we first analyze the impact of the GDR of nonideal DLs on the performance of TR and TRPC UWB systems. Then a new design solution for both TR and TRPC transceivers is proposed, where the GDR information of the nonideal DL at the receiver side is introduced into transmitter side. The performance of the new design solution is analyzed and simulation results prove the robustness and efficiency of this new design method in reducing the impaction caused by nonideal DLs. Moreover, the proposed design solution can also greatly relieve the high design requirement of DLs in both the transmitter and receiver side and therefore offer valuable insight for the practical transceiver design in both TR and TRPC related UWB systems.

Automated summary

This article investigated the influence of nonideal delay lines on the performance of conventional TR and TRPC UWB systems, and proposed a new design solution that introduced the group delay ripple information of nonideal delay lines from the receiver side to compensate for the distortion caused by nonideal delay lines. Simulation results demonstrated the robustness and efficiency of this new design method, and also highlighted its potential to alleviate the high design requirement of delay lines in practical transceiver design for TR and TRPC UWB systems.