Performance Analysis of Ultra Wideband Receivers for High Data Rate Wireless Personal Area Network System

For high data rate ultra wideband communication system, performance comparison of Rake, MMSE and Rake-MMSE receivers is attempted in this paper. Further a detail study on Rake-MMSE time domain equalizers is carried out taking into account all the important parameters such as the effect of the number of Rake fingers and equalizer taps on the error rate performance. This receiver combats inter-symbol interference by taking advantages of both the Rake and equalizer structure. The bit error rate performances are investigated using MATLAB simulation on IEEE 802.15.3a defined UWB channel models. Simulation results show that the bit error rate probability of Rake-MMSE receiver is much better than Rake receiver and MMSE equalizer. Study on non-line of sight indoor channel models illustrates that bit error rate performance of Rake-MMSE (both LE and DFE) improves for CM3 model with smaller spread compared to CM4 channel model. It is indicated that for a MMSE equalizer operating at low to medium SNR values, the number of Rake fingers is the dominant factor to improve system performance, while at high SNR values the number of equalizer taps plays a more significant role in reducing the error rate.