We at Virginia Tech. are involved in various aspects of UWB research. Due to our expertise in hardware as well as software we are looking into receivers structures for UWB, Application of UWB to Ad-Hoc Networks, Application of layered space time architecture to UWB.

Application of Layered Space Time Architecture to UWB

Due to the dificulty of having multiple antennas at the receiver and the need to have high data rates in indoor environments , it is impossible to use V-BLAST like techniques. We have proposed of achieving the same kind of spectral efficiencies by using just 1 receive antenna and treating multipath as a dimension in which we would resolve the signals at the receiver. We have shown that using this technique we are able to achieve significant gains in spectral efficiency with little or no degradation in energy efficiency. More more information you can refer to the papers in the publications section.

Receiver Designs

The modeling of small scale effects must take into account the possible pulse distortion that a signal of such a large bandwidth may experience in addition to the multipath distribution and fading characteristics caused by the channel. Optimum receiver design must take channel effects into account. Some issues in the receiver design include channel estimation (for a large number low power multipath components), Rake combining techniques, synchronization, and hardware limitations of analog and digital techniques which we are currently looking into.

Channel characterization

As a part of the DARPA-NETEX project we are involved in channel measurements and will be doing channel characterization for ultra wideband signals. Currently we are in the process of taking measurements.

Other efforts include analysis of pulse shapes for UWB signals and analysis of a link budget for such a system.