A reconfigurable software defined ultra-wideband impulse radio transceiver

An ultra-wideband (UWB) software defined radio (SDR) implementation is presented. The developed impulse radio (IR) transceiver employs first order bandpass (BP) sampling at a conversion frequency which is four times the channel bandwidth. The subsampling architecture directly provides the RF signal avoiding any non-ideal mixer stages and reduces the requirements of digital signal processing implemented in a field programmable gate array (FPGA). The transmitter consists basically of a multi-Nyquist digital to analog converter (DAC), whereas the implemented matched filter (MF) receiver prototype employs a standard digitizing oscilloscope. This design can be adaptively reconfigured in terms of modulation, data rate, and channel equalization. The reconfigurable design is used for an extensive performance analysis of the quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK) modulation scheme investigating the influence of different antennas, amplifiers, narrowband interferers as well as diff erent equalizer lengths. Even for distances up to 7 m in a multipath environment robust communication was achieved.