A Low-Power Energy Detection IR-UWB Synchronization and Decision Scheme for Wireless Sensor Network Applications

Impulse Radio Ultra-wideband (IR-UWB) is a modern radio technology that uses modulated pulses to transmit information and works at extremely low energy levels. It is popularly used in short-range, low power and low cost communications such as vehicular ad-hoc networks (VANETs), RFIDs and wireless sensor networks (WSN). This paper presents the design and implementation of an IR-UWB Transceiver using energy detection scheme with on-off keying (OOK) modulation. A synchronization and detection algorithm called energy offset based scheme is proposed and used in the transceiver, which can greatly reduce power consumptions for synchronization and simplify hardware complexity. To increase flexibility, the prototype of the transceiver’s baseband is implemented on FPGA, with design of FSMs in the controller. Simulation results are given, which reveal that the proposed UWB receiver has simple and power saving synchronization blocks, smaller preamble code length in synchronization, while maintaining performance in the target level. With RF front-end added, the transceiver is used as a wireless communication module in a WSN for water quality monitoring. Field testing data are given, showing the transceiver can work at 10 Mbps in 10 m radius, with energy efficiency below 1 nJ/bit. Copyright © 2013 IFSA.