IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 61, NO.

3, MARCH 2013 1171

Efcient Hybrid Modulation with Phase-Directed
Pulse Position Estimation for UWB-IR Systems
Sinae Ji, Seongjoo Lee, Senior Member, IEEE, and Jaeseok Kim, Senior Member, IEEE
AbstractThis paper proposes an efcient hybrid modulation
scheme for a mixed phase-shift keying and pulse-position modu-
lation (PSK/PPM) for heterogeneous networks employing ultra-
wideband impulse radio (UWB-IR). The proposed scheme can
support both coherent and noncoherent reception and is com-
patible with the IEEE 802.15.4a standard. Conventional hybrid
modulation schemes for heterogeneous networks are generally
constructed with a super-orthogonal coding (SOC) technique
with which coherent receivers can get an additional performance
improvement by encoding the phase bits. However, with the
proposed modulation scheme, a coherent receiver can achieve
a performance improvement by displaying its best capability on
phase detection through a simple waveform mapping scheme.
The proposed scheme requires no extra hardware or power
consumption for performance improvement in coherent receivers.
Simulations show that the BER of the proposed scheme in
a coherent receiver is increased by 2.7dB over the hybrid
modulation with no combined phase coding and also comparable
to the SOC-combined modulation scheme employed in the IEEEE
802.15.4a. The error performance of the proposed scheme is
analyzed, and the numerical results are presented in this paper.
Index TermsUWB-IR, PPM, PSK, hybrid modulation, het-
erogeneous network, super-orthogonal coding.
I. INTRODUCTION
U
WB-IR communication systems developed for wireless
personal area networks (WPAN) offer great exibility
of performance, data rate, range, power and quality-of-service
(QoS) by user preference. It is thus very desirable for UWB-
IR communication systems to enable heterogeneous network
structures where users can exibly choose the type of re-
ceiver such as a low-cost non-coherent energy detector (ED)
and a high performance coherent rake receiver sufcient to
achieve their specic requirements [1], [2]. Likewise, various
hybrid modulation schemes are also required, which make
non-coherent EDs and coherent rake receivers simultaneously
receive the signal with their own best quality [2]. To this
end, PPM and PSK are generally employed to construct a
hybrid modulation for the heterogeneous network including
EDs and coherent receivers due to their simplicity and high
performance, respectively. However, when a coherent receiver
operates with a hybrid PPM and PSK modulation (henceforth,
HM-PPM/PSK), it cannot display its best performance on
Manuscript received October 21, 2011; revised April 27 and August 31,
2012. The associate editor coordinating the review of this paper and approving
it for publication was A. Zanella.
This work was supported by the Technology Innovation Program,
10035389, funded by the Ministry of Knowledge Economy (MKE, Korea).
S. Ji and J. Kim are with the School of Electrical and Electronics Engi-
neering, Yonsei Univ., Seoul, Korea (e-mail: {jsa950, jaekim}@yonsei.ac.kr).
S. Lee is with the Dept. of Info. and Commun. Eng., Sejong University,
Seoul, Korea (e-mail: seongjoo@sejong.ac.kr).
Digital Object Identier 10.1109/TCOMM.2013.13.110681
phase detection compared to when operating with the unitary
PSK modulation. This is because the coherent receivers have
no accurate knowledge on the locations or modulation slots
of the received pulses due to the combined PPM signaling.
Hence, the receivers need to use the averaged correlation out-
puts taken over all PPM modulation slots for phase detection,
leading to performance decrease by an increased noise oor
from the no-signal modulation slots.
Therefore, in order to enhance the phase detection per-
formance in coherent receivers, coding combined modulation
schemes, especially with a SOC technique [3], [4], are used for
heterogeneous networks. HM-PPM/PSK combined with SOC
modulates the phase of the transmitted pulses with the encoded
phase bits, so coherent receivers can get an additional coding
gain by decoding the redundant phase bits [1]. For instance,
the IEEE 802.15.4a standard adopts a mixed binary PPM
and binary PSK modulation combined with a systematical
convolutional coding (henceforth, SC-BPPM/BPSK) which is
one of the SOC schemes. Non-coherent detectors are able to
detect the PPM modulated data bits but not the PSK modulated
parity ones, resulting from the application of a systematic
convolutional code, whereas coherent receivers can detect
the entire encoded sequence including the phase sequence
achieving a coding gain [5], [6]. However, the hardware and
power consumption used in the maximum likelihood sequence
detection (MLSD) for decoding the phase bits becomes a con-
siderable burden for UWB-IR systems which are developed for
low-power and low-cost communications.
Motivated by this, we propose an efcient hybrid modula-
tion scheme for heterogeneous networks with which coherent
receivers can increase the BER performance in detection stage
without any special coding techniques combined. Instead, the
proposed scheme enables a coherent receiver to improve the
detection performance by using its best capability on phase
detection and associating data detection with the increased
phase detection only. To realize this, the proposed scheme
is designed such that the phase detection can be carried out
in the estimated modulation slots by phase-directed position
estimation (PDPE) algorithm. The phase detection in the
estimated slots leads to a performance increase compared
to the phase detection performed within the whole symbol
interval. This improvement stems from the reduced noise
oor in the decision statistics and results in the total BER
improvement as well. The proposed hybrid modulation with
PDPE (henceforth, HM-PDPE) can offer coherent receivers a
detection performance close to that of BPSK without extra
resource usage. In the following, the proposed HM-PDPE
scheme is described in more detail and veried in comparison
with SC-BPPM/BPSK.
0090-6778/13$31.00 c 2013 IEEE
1172 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 61, NO. 3, MARCH 2013
II. SYSTEM DESCRIPTION
A. Transmitted Signal Model
For performance analysis, the IEEE 802.15.4a standard is
employed with inter-symbol and inter-burst interference being
avoided through guard time insertion. In addition, the channel
is considered time-invariant during the transmission of a data
packet, therefore the time hopping for spectrum smoothing
and multiple access is neglected for simplicity. In the IEEE
802.15.4a system, the modulated symbols are transmitted as
bursts of N
c
pulses which are spread by a random sequence.
Hence, the HM-BPPM/BPSK signal without any combined
coding or signaling schemes can be represented by
s
HM
(t) =

i
(1 2a
i
)p
i
(t iT
b
a
i

ppm
) (1)
where a
i
{0, 1} is the i-th equiprobable data bit conveyed
by a pulse burst, T
b
is the symbol interval,
ppm
is the PPM
modulation index and p
i
is a burst of N
c
pulses or chips.
Denoting T
c
as the chip interval, the burst signal is given by
p
i
(t) =
Nc1

n=0
c
iNc+n
w(t nT
c
) (2)
where c
n
{1, 1} is a time-varying binary spreading chip
sequence multiplied to each pulse, which is a pseudo-noise
sequence with period 2
15
1, and w(t) is the transmitted
pulse. Furthermore, the IEEE 802.15.4a adopts a systematical
convolutional coding, whereby the phase bits are generally
encoded for performance improvement in coherent receivers
and the position bits are transmitted as they are for simple
detection in ED receivers. This SC-BPPM/BPSK signal can
be written as
s
HMenc
(t) =

i
(1 2b
i
)p
i
(t iT
b
a
i

ppm
) (3)
where b
i
{0, 1} is the convolutionally encoded phase bit
and generated by the encoder shown in Fig. 1. By modulating
the bursts with the redundant phase bits, coherent receivers
get an additional coding gain by decoding them.
However, the proposed HM-PDPE is devised coherent re-
ceivers to improve the BER performance in detection stage
without consuming extra hardware and power resources in
decoding process. To this end, the HM-PDPE signal is con-
structed by the following mapping rules on the position
and phase of the transmitted burst: 1) The position of the
transmitted symbol or burst depends only on the current data
bit without any encoding so the position bits can be detected
without decoding process, but the extension to the case of
a position encoding is straightforward. 2) The phase of the
transmitted symbol indicates the position of the following
symbol, so the modulation slot of the current symbol can be
estimated by the phase of the previous symbol (phase-directed
position estimation). The transmitted signal meeting 1) and 2)
can be given by
s
T
(t) =

i
(1 2a
i+1
)p
i
(t iT
b
a
i

ppm
) (4)
where the phase information of the i-th symbol becomes the
position of the following symbol, i.e., a
i+1
. Therefore, the
Fig. 1. (a) Waveform of BPPM, BPSK and the proposed HM-PDPE; (b)
Block diagram of SC-BPPM/BPSK and the proposed HM-PDPE.
position of the i + 1-th symbol can be estimated by the
phase of the i-th symbol. Regarding the decision of the data
bits in coherent receivers, the phase bits are used due to the
superiority of the phase detection to the position detection [7].
In the receiver, the position estimation and the data bit
decision are carried out at the same time. That is, if the
detected phase of the i-th symbol is 1, then the position
bit of the i +1-th symbol is estimated to be 1, and the data bit
is determined to be 1 as well, and vice versa. The performance
of the phase detection carried out within the estimated slots
will be the same as that of BPSK if all the estimations are
correct, but it is not true. The exact performance of HM-
PDPE considering the effect of the position estimation errors
is derived in Section IV.
The corresponding wave and block diagram of HM-PDPE
are shown in Fig. 1. As shown in Fig. 1 (a), a redundant bit is
needed to let the coherent receiver know the starting position
for the rst symbol detection, and that is set to the rst slot.
Actually, the redundant bit is simply generated by setting the
register (Delay) of the mapper in Fig. 1 (b) to zero. Notice that
the coherent receivers operating with HM-PDPE need to start
the detection from the redundant symbol to the one symbol
before the last one, whereas the ED receivers operate from the
second symbol to the last one.
JI et al.: EFFICIENT HYBRID MODULATION WITH PHASE-DIRECTED PULSE POSITION ESTIMATION FOR UWB-IR SYSTEMS 1173
B. Channel and Received Signal Model
Signal s
T
(t) propagates through a quasi-static multipath
channel adopted in the IEEE 802.15 TG 4a [8], which is
the Saleh-Valenzuela extension model whereby the impulse
response is based on [6] and dened as
h(t) =
Lc1

l=0
Lr1

k=0

k,l
e
j
k,l
(t T
l

k,l
) (5)
where
k,l
is the tap weight of the k-th component in the l-th
cluster, T
l
is the delay of the l-th cluster, and
k,l
is the delay
of the k-th multipath component relative to the l-th cluster
arrival time T
l
. The phases
k,l
are uniformly distributed,
i.e., for a bandpass system, the phase is uniformly distributed
in the range [0, 2]. The received signal passes through a
rectangular low-pass lter of bandwidth B to reduce the noise
effect. Assuming perfect timing synchronization and setting

ppm
= T
b
/2, the received signal is represented as
r(t) =

i
(1 2a
i+1
)q
i
(t iT
b
a
i
T
b
/2) + n(t) (6)
where q
i
(t) is the burst response to h(t), i.e., q
i
(t) = p
i
(t)
h(t), and the channel response to the mono pulse is g(t) =
w(t)h(t). To avoid inter-symbol interference (ISI), the guard
time of T
b
/4 is inserted in every modulation slot and it is
assumed that q
i
(t) is spanned in the duration of [0, T
h
) with
T
h
T
b
/2. At last, n(t) is an additive white Gaussian noise
(AWGN) with the two-sided spectral density of N
0
/2 in the
transmitted band B f B.
III. RECEPTION OF HM-PDPE
A digital coherent receiver and an ED receiver are consid-
ered for the coherent and non-coherent reception, respectively.
For coherent reception, it is assumed that reliable channel
estimation is available at the receiver, whereas for noncoherent
reception no channel estimation is needed. Notice that, for
symbol detection in coherent receivers, only phase detection
is performed as aforementioned.
A. Coherent Reception
The low-pass ltered received signal is sampled at the
sampling rate of f
s
= 1/T
s
where T
s
= T
c
/L and L is
the oversampling rate. Then, the samples of the i-th received
symbol in the signal-located slot (r
ai
k,i
) and no signal-located
slot (r
ai
k,i
) can be given by
r
ai
k,i
= (1 2a
i+1
)q
i
(kT
s
) + n(iT
b
+ a
i
T
b
/2 + kT
s
)
= (1 2a
i+1
)q
k,i
+ n
ai
k,i
(7)
and
r
ai
k,i
= n(iT
b
+ a
i
T
b
/2 + kT
s
)
= n
ai
k,i
(8)
respectively, where i and k are the symbol and sampling index,
respectively. The received burst needs to be correlated with
q
i
(t) and this is performed in two steps of despreading and
correlation with the estimated chip response. The despread
sample in the signal-located slot can be written as
x
ai
k,i
=
Nc1

m=0
c
iNc+m
r
ai
i,mL+k
=
Nc1

m=0
c
iNc+m
_
(1 2a
i+1
)q
i,mL+k
+ n
ai
i,mL+k
_
=
Nc1

m=0
c
iNc+m
_
(1 2a
i+1
)
Nc1

n=0
c
iNc+n
g
_
(mL + k) T
s
nT
c
_
+ n
ai
i,mL+k
_
= (1 2a
i+1
)
Nc1

m=0
Nc1

n=0
c
iNc+m
c
iNc+n
g(kT
s
+ (mn)
T
c
) +
Nc1

m=0
c
iNc+m
n
ai
i,mL+k
(9)
where k = 0, 1, 2, ..., K 1 (K is the
number of samples taken per each chip) and
x
ai
k,i
=

Nc1
m=0
c
iNc+m
n
ai
i,mL+k
. Substituting y
ai
k,i
for

Nc1
m=0

Nc1
n=0
c
iNc+m
c
iNc+n
g (kT
s
+ (mn)T
c
) and
ai
k,i
for

Nc1
m=0
c
iNc+m
n
ai
i,mL+k
, then x
ai
k,i
and x
ai
k,i
are simplied
to (1 2a
i+1
)y
ai
k,i
+
ai
k,i
and
ai
k,i
, respectively. After
despreading, the samples are correlated with the estimated
chip (pulse) response g(t) [9], then the correlation output is
obtained as following
Z
ai
i
=
K1

k=0
g
k
_
(1 2a
i+1
)y
ai
k,i
+
ai
k,i
_
= (1 2a
i+1
)
K1

k=0
g
k
y
ai
k,i
+
K1

k=0
g
k

ai
k,i
= (1 2a
i+1
)G
i
+
ai
i
(10)
where g
k
= g(kT
s
), G
i
=

K1
k=0

Nc1
m=0

Nc1
n=0
c
iNc+m
c
iNc+n
g(kT
s
)g (kT
s
+ (mn)T
c
) and
ai
i
=

K1
k=0
g
k

ai
k,i
,
and G
i
and
ai
i
are the effective signal and noise component
of correlation output, respectively. In the proposed scheme,
the correlation output from the a
i
-th slot in the i-th symbol
interval indicates the i + 1-th data bit, therefore, by this
decision strategy, the i +1-th data bit is determined as follows
a
i+1
=
_
0, if Z
ai
i
> 0
1, if Z
ai
i
0
(11)
where i = 0, 1, 2, ..., N 1 and N is the total number of
symbols transmitted. The detected phase bit a
i+1
is also used
to estimate the position of the i + 1-th symbol.
On the other hand, in HM-BPPM/BPSK, the phase bit
detection is carried out with the averaged (or summed) corre-
lation outputs as follows
a
av,i
=

0, if Z
i
=
1
2
(Z
0
i
+ Z
1
i
) > 0
1, if Z
i
=
1
2
(Z
0
i
+ Z
1
i
) 0
(12)
where i = 1, 2, ..., N.
1174 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 61, NO. 3, MARCH 2013
B. Noncoherent Reception
In EDs with no information on g
k
except its duration T
h
,
the optimum decision strategy [9] consists of computing the
energies
Z
0
i
=
_
iT
b
+T
h
iT
b
r
2
(t)dt (13)
Z
1
i
=
_
iT
b
+T
b
/2+T
h
iT
b
+T
b
/2
r
2
(t)dt (14)
and deciding by the energy comparison as follows
a
ED,i
=
_
0, if Z
0
i
> Z
1
i
1, if Z
0
i
Z
1
i
(15)
where i = 1, 2, ..., N. In EDs, the noise-by-noise component
caused by squaring operation as in (13) and (14) increases
the noise oor in the decision static and decreases the BER
performance enormously. The performance of ED on the
position detection is depicted in Section V. The derivation
of the numerical analysis for the BER performance is not
mentioned in this paper and please refer to [10] for the detailed
analysis.
IV. PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS OF HM-PDPE
There occur two types of errors in the coherent receivers
employing HM-PDPE. One is phase detection error, and the
other is propagated error caused by wrong position estimation.
The probability of the phase detection error can be regarded to
be the same as the BER of BPSK under the assumption that all
of the position estimations are correct. On the other hand, the
propagation error is conditional upon a priori wrong position
estimation. For a simple calculation of the BER of HM-PDPE,
the two types of error will be considered individually and
combined later.
A. The BER Performance of BPSK
Assuming that the position estimation is correct,
i.e., a
i
= a
i
, we can see from (10) that the decision
statistic Z
ai
i
consists of two terms: the signal component
G
i
and the noise component
ai
i
. Furthermore,
the channel is assumed perfectly known, that is,
g(t) = g(t), so the energy and noise component become
G
i
=

K1
k=0

Nc1
m=0

Nc1
=Nc+1
c
iNc+m
c
iNc+m
g
k
g
k+L
and
ai
i
=

K1
k=0

Nc1
m=0
g
k
c
iNc+m
n
ai
i,mL+k
, respectively.
Therefore, the instantaneous SNR of the i-th symbol
conned in the correctly estimated slot is given by (16), since
E[
ai
i
] = 0 with E[c
m
] = 0 and E[n
ai
k,i
] = 0, and E[(
ai
i
)
2
] =

K1
k=0

Nc1
m=0

Nc1
=Nc+1
c
iNc+m
c
iNc+m
g
k
g
k+L
(N
0
/2)
with E[n
ai
k,i
n
ai
k

,i
] = 0 for k = k

[11], [12] and [13]. Notice

that G
i
is time-varying depending on the symbol index i due
to the inter-pulse interference (IPI) caused by the random
channel and the random spreading code, thus so is
ai
. The
fading statistics and models of indoor channels are modeled
as lognormal fading [9],[14], therefore the statistics of
ai
,
which is a sum of independent lognormal RVs, is also a
lognormal RV. Without loss of generality, the index a
i
and i
can be omitted and the phase detection error probability in the
estimated modulation slot can be derived via corresponding
mathematical manipulations as
P

=
_

0
Q(

)f()d. (17)
Letting = e
x
, where x, x N(
x
,
2
x
), is a normal RV,
f() is given by
f() =
1

2
exp[(ln
x
)
2
/2
2
x
] (18)
and the two parameters
x
and
x
are obtained as

x
= ln(E[])
1
2
ln
_
1 +
var[]
(E[])
2
_
(19a)

x
= ln
_
1 +
var[]
(E[])
2
_
. (19b)
where
E[] =
2
N
0
E[G]
=
2
N
0
E
_
K1

k=0
Nc1

m=0
Nc1

=Nc+1
c
m
c
m
g
k
g
k+L
_
=
2N
c
N
0
K1

k=0
g
2
k
(20)
and
var[] =
4
N
2
0
var[G]
=
16
N
2
0
Nc1

=1
_
(
Nc1

m=0
c
m
c
m+
)(
K1

k=0
g
k
g
k+L
)
_
2
.
(21)
P

can be considered as the BER of BPSK i.e., P

BPSK
and
this result will be used to calculate the BER of HM-PDPE.
On the other hand, in the conventional coherent receivers
with no knowledge of the position information of the received
symbols, the BER of the phase detection performance is given
by
P
,HM
=
_

0
Q(
_
/2)f()d. (22)
where the averaged correlation output Z
i
=
1
2
(Z
0
i
+ Z
1
i
) is
exploited and this becomes the BER of the coherent receivers
employing HM-BPPM/BPSK without any combined coding
schemes. As derived in (17) and (22), the performance of
the phase detection carried out in the estimated slot is 3dB
higher than the one performed with the averaged correlation
output if the estimated slots are all correct. Therefore, the
same amount of BER improvement is expected in HM-PDPE.
However, the real performance improvement of HM-PDPE is
a little less than 3dB because of the error propagation due to
the wrong position estimation and this will be analyzed in the
next section.
JI et al.: EFFICIENT HYBRID MODULATION WITH PHASE-DIRECTED PULSE POSITION ESTIMATION FOR UWB-IR SYSTEMS 1175

ai
=
G
2
i
var[
ai
i
]
=
G
2
i
E[(
ai
i
)
2
] (E[
ai
i
])
2
=
_

K1
k=0

Nc1
m=0

Nc1
=Nc+1
c
iNc+m
c
iNc+m
g
k
g
k+L
_
2
E[(

K1
k=0

Nc1
m=0
g
k
c
iNc+m
n
ai
i,mL+k
)
2
] (E[

K1
k=0

Nc1
m=0
g
k
c
iNc+m
n
ai
i,mL+k
])
2
=
_

K1
k=0

Nc1
m=0

Nc1
=Nc+1
c
iNc+m
c
iNc+m
g
k
g
k+L
_
2

K1
k=0

Nc1
m=0

Nc1
=Nc+1
c
iNc+m
c
iNc+m
g
k
g
k+L
(N
0
/2)
=
2G
i
N
0
(16)
B. The Probability of the Error Propagation
In HM-PDPE, due to the wrong position estimation, the
phase detection error might occur even if the sign of the
correlation output from the signal-located slot is not reversed.
The phase detection error caused by this wrong position esti-
mation propagates until the sign of the correlation output from
the no signal-located slot becomes the same as the one from
the signal-located slot by chance. So the error propagation
probability becomes lower as the error propagates and stops
when the output signs of the two correlation outputs become
correctly the same. The probability of the phase detection
error in the rst symbol after the wrong position estimation
happened in the i 1-th symbol can be calculated as
P
P,1
(e) = P(sign(Z
ai
i
) = sign(Z
ai
i
)| a
i
= a
i
). (23)
Lets dene P( a
i
= a
i
) as the probability of the position
estimation error for the i-th symbol and P(sign(Z
ai
i
) =
sign(Z
ai
i
)) as the probability for the two correlation out-
puts from the signal-located and no signal-located slot to
be different. In no ISI condition due to the guard time
interval, P( a
i
= a
i
) and P(sign(Z
ai
i
) = sign(Z
ai
i
)) are
uncorrelated and independent from each other. In addition,
when the position estimation is wrong, the decision statistic
is a Gaussian RV with zero-mean, i.e., Z
ai
i
N(0,
2

a
i
),
so P(sign(Z
ai
i
) = sign(Z
ai
i
)) =
1
2
because P(Z
ai
i
> 0) =
P(Z
ai
i
0) =
1
2
. Thus, P
P,1
(e) is simplied to
1
2
P( a
i
= a
i
),
and since P( a
i
= a
i
) = P
BPSK
, P
P,1
(e) becomes
1
2
P
BPSK
.
In the same manner, the estimation or detection error prob-
ability in the j-th following symbol interval after the wrong
position estimation, P
P,j
(e) is calculated to (
1
2
)
j
P
BPSK
.
C. The Total Error Rate and the Propagated Error Correction
As mentioned above, the overall error rate is calculated
by adding the phase error probability and the following all
possible propagation error probabilities as follows
P(e) = P
BPSK
+
J

j=1
(
1
2
)
j
P
BPSK
=
J

j=0
(
1
2
)
j
P
BPSK
(24)
where j is the possible error propagation length ranging
from 1 to N 1. Under the assumption that the data length
is considerably long, thus J is large enough to apply the
approximation of the sum of geometric sequences, P(e) can
be simplied to
P(e) P
BPSK
1
1
1
2
= 2P
BPSK
(25)
Therefore, the error rate of HM-PDPE becomes twice that of
BPSK. However, the performance of HM-PDPE can approach
closer to BPSK by propagation error detection and correction
method mentioned in the following paragraph.
The possible approach for the propagation error detection is
to exploit the results of the phase detection performed with the
averaged correlation output, a
av,i
. To this end, it is assumed
that the probability of a consecutive error in a
av,i
is very
low and this is true in practical SNR region. Therefore, if
there occurs a consecutive difference between a
i
and a
av,i
,
it can be regarded that the error is being propagated due to
the wrong position estimation. We select a two-consecutive
difference between a
i
and a
av,i
as the propagation error
detection condition. Hence, if a
i
= a
av,i
and a
i1
= a
av,i1
,
it is considered that there have occurred phase detection
errors in the i 2-th, i 1-th and i-th symbols. When the
propagation error is detected, the only two previous bits a
i1
and a
i
are to be corrected to trade off against the false error
correction which occurs if the consecutive difference between
a
i
and a
av,i
is caused by the errors in a
av,i
. However, single
error propagations cannot be detected because one difference
between a
i
and a
av,i
is highly likely to be considered that
the error has occurred only in a
av,i
due to the higher error
probability of a
av,i
over a
i
. Using the propagation error
detection and correction, the error would not propagate further
than two symbols. However, because this error correction
can be wrong, the improved BER of HM-PDPE with the
propagated error correction should be adjusted considering
not only the shortened propagated errors but also the falsely
corrected errors. Assuming that the probability of the error
correction to be wrong is
1
2
, the BER of (25) improved to
P(e) P
BPSK
+
1
2
P
BPSK
+
1
2
2P( a
i
= a
av,i
| a
av,i1
= a
av,i1
)
= 1.5P
BPSK
+ P
2
,HM
(26)
1176 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 61, NO. 3, MARCH 2013
Fig. 2. The performance of HM-PDPE in CM1.
Fig. 3. The performance of HM-PDPE in CM2.
since whenever a false error correction occurs, 2 bit errors are
brought about.
V. PERFORMANCE RESULTS
In this section, the simulation results of HM-PDPE are
presented. For performance comparison, SC-BPPM/BPSK
adopted in the IEEE 802.15.4a standard is exploited and both
hard and soft decision Viterbi algorithm are employed for
decoding the convolutionary encoded symbols.
For simulations, CM1 and CM2 channel are used modeling
residential LOS and NLOS environments, respectively, and
the parameters of the mandatory transmission mode of the
IEEE 802.15.4a are applied, where the mono pulse w(t) is
shaped as the second derivative of a Gaussian function with
duration T
c
2ns, N
c
= 16, and 851 kbps (T
b
= 512T
c
)
is targeted. In addition, the guard time of T
b
/4 is inserted in
every modulation slot to avoid ISI. For coherent detection, T
s
is set to 1ns, thus L = 2, and the energy of the received
signal is taken within [0, 288ns), which is the maximum
channel delay of the CM2, thus the receiver can collect all
the multipath components [8]. Finally, the simulation results
are averaged over 100 channel realizations.
Fig. 4. Comparison between simulated results and analytical results in CM2
channel.
Fig. 5. Improved performance of HM-PDPE with the propagated error
correction.
Figures 2 and 3 show the BER simulation results in the
coherent receiver for HM-BPPM/BPSK, HM-PDPE with the
propagated error correction, and SC-BPPM/BPSK, and in
the noncoherent ED for BPPM under the channel CM1 and
CM2, respectively. The proposed HM-PDPE is devised for
the coherent receivers to use their best capability on phase
detection, but in reality, it cannot achieve the same perfor-
mance as BPSK due to the error propagation. The sacriced
performance is recovered in part by the propagated error
correction. HM-PDPE wth the propagated error correction
enables 2.7dB performance increase at BER = 10
3
, and
when compared with SC-BPPM/BPSK, it leads to 0.9dB
improvement and 1.2dB disadvantage over the hard and soft
decision Viterbi decoding, respectively. Figure 4 illustrates
simulation and analytical results derived in (26), where it is
seen that the analytical performance agrees with the simulated
performance more perfectly in high SNR range because the
higher SNR is, the more suitable the error correction algo-
rithm is. Also, Fig. 5 shows the improvement obtained by
the error correction algorithm, and that is about 0.5dB. As
JI et al.: EFFICIENT HYBRID MODULATION WITH PHASE-DIRECTED PULSE POSITION ESTIMATION FOR UWB-IR SYSTEMS 1177
is seen, even with no error correction function, HM-PDPE
shows better performance than SC-BPPM/BPSK using a hard
decision Viterbi decoder, and that means the performance
enhancement in HM-PDPE is achieved at no cost. This per-
formance improvement of HM-PDPE is obtained from the
decreased noise variance in decision statistic by estimating
the symbol-located modulation slots. In addition, HM-PDPE
enables noncoherent reception as well, but the performance of
it is 14dB lower than the coherent reception. The signicant
performance decrease of the noncoherent receiver stems from
the squared noise component. The performance improvement
of HM-PDPE in the coherent receivers is achieved without
any increase in hardware complexity unlike SC-BPPM/BPSK
scheme requiring a Viterbi decoder (a big hardware burden
for UWB-IR systems), and the power saving is also expected
because no position detection is needed.
VI. CONCLUSION
A hybrid modulation scheme called HM-PDPE has been
established for UWB-IR heterogeneous networks. HM-PDPE
has been devised for the coherent receiver to display its
best capability on phase detection by enabling phase-directed
position estimation. We obtained a performance improvement
from HM-PDPE in detection stage without combining any
special coding techniques in coherent receivers. HM-PDPE
provided an enhanced performance close to BPSK in coherent
receivers achieving 2.7dB BER improvement compared to no
coding combined hybrid modulation as well as supporting the
noncoherent receivers.
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Sinae Ji received a B.S. degree in radio science
engineering from Chungnam National University,
Daejeon, Korea in 1999, M.S. degree in electrical
and electronic engineering from ICU, Daejon in
2004, and currently pursuing Ph.D. degree in elec-
tronic engineering from Yonsei University, Seoul,
Korea from 2006. Her research interests includes
algorithms and SoC design for UWB IR.
Seongjoo Lee (M96-SM11) received his BS, MS,
and PhD degrees in electrical and electronic engi-
neering from Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea, in
1993, 1998, and 2002, respectively. From 2002 to
2003, he was a senior research engineer at the IT
SoC Research Center and the ASIC Research Cen-
ter, Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea. From 2003 to
2005, he was a senior engineer in the Core Tech Sec-
tor, Visual-Display Division, Samsung Electronics
Co. Ltd., Suwon, Korea. He was a research professor
at the IT Center and the IT SoC Research Center,
Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea from 2005 and to 2006. He is currently an
associate professor in the Department of Information and Communication
Engineering at Sejong University, Seoul, Korea. His current research interests
include SoC design for high-speed wireless communication systems and
image processing systems.
Jaeseok Kim received a B.S. degree in electronic
engineering from Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea
in 1977, M.S. degree in electrical and electronic
engineering from KAIST, Daejon, Korea in 1979,
and Ph.D. degree in electronic engineering from
RPI, NY, USA in 1988. From 1988 to 1993, he was
a member of the technical staff at AT&T Bell Labs,
USA. He was Director of the VLSI Architecture
Design Lab of ETRI from 1993 to 1996. He is
currently a professor in the electrical and electronic
engineering department at Yonsei University, Seoul,
Korea. His current research interests include communication IC design, high
performance Digital Signal Processor VLSI design, and CAD S/W.