Detection, Synchronization, Channel Estimation and Capacity in UWB Sensor Network using Compressed Sensing

Conventional receivers in ultra-wideband (UWB) communication system usually require high sampling rate and thus consume much power. With compressed sensing (CS), the sampling rate can potentially be reduced. In this thesis, the performance of CS used in a UWB receiver is evaluated.
The bit error rate (BER) performance of systems with different numbers of pilots, projection vectors, and fingers in rake receiver, and different receiver structures is evaluated. The effect of the finite bit resolution on channel estimation is also investigated. It is shown that the sampling rate can be reduced significantly with only a slight degradation in performance.
A second aspect of UWB investigated is channel measurement and corresponding channel capacity. The measurement data of a channel between the UWB antennas under the bridge across Telegraph Road in Michigan is used to calculate the channel capacity.
A third aspect of UWB communication considered involves the synchronization and detection of the signal presence. An m-sequence is used to synchronize the signal and the corresponding BER performance is evaluated. Last, the autocorrelation characteristic of the signal is exploited to detect the existence of the signal and the threshold to determine the existence of signals is independent of signal-to-noise ratio.