Performance of high rate 802.15.4 UWB PHY over multipath fading channels

This paper investigates the performance of high rate IEEE 802.15.4 UWB PHY schemes. Evaluation takes place over office, residential and outdoor IEEE channel models via Monte-Carlo simulation. Special attention is given to the highest rate (27.24 Mbps) scheme that suffers from intersymbol interference (ISI) over NLOS outdoor and residential channels. Optimum bit-to-symbol mapping (OBM), ISI cancellation and MLSE techniques are proposed and evaluated in conjunction with RAKE reception. Significant gains are attained with the proposed enhancements while keeping complexity low. On the other hand, the coverage range of high rate schemes is estimated for a given BEP. It is deduced that 27.24 Mbps and 6.81 Mbps schemes are well applicable to all LOS channels. However, the maximum allowable transmission power deteriorates range in NLOS cases. Overall, high rate schemes are shown to deserve more attention in the context of high rate sensor applications.