Synchronization of Multiple UWB Piconets

Abstract

Timing synchronization is known to affect critically the performance of all coherent communication systems. Its effects are particularly pronounced in contemporary wireless technologies including ultra-wideband radios and wireless sensor networks, where cooperative or ad hoc access is challenged by arbitrary asynchronism, intersymbol interference, receiver noise, as well as interand intra-piconet interference arising from concurrently communicating nodes. To cope with these challenges, the present paper introduces piconet-specific synchronization patterns and simple averaging operations at the receiving ends, which enable low complexity timing acquisition through energy detection and demodulation by matching to a synchronized aggregate template. Pattern sequences are designed for both training-based and blind operation. Either way, the idea behind these designs is to periodically increase the transmit-power of each piconet’s synchronizing node with a period characteristic of each piconet. Performance of the novel synchronization protocols is tested with simulations conforming to an ultra-wideband wireless personal area network (WPAN) setup.