A Superior Iterative Transmitted-Reference Pulse Cluster Ultra-

Wideband System for Ranging and Communication

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CC BY 4.0

SUBMISSION DATE / POSTED DATE

10-03-2022 / 16-03-2022

CITATION

Khani, Hassan (2022): A Superior Iterative Transmitted-Reference Pulse Cluster Ultra-Wideband System for
Ranging and Communication. TechRxiv. Preprint. https://doi.org/10.36227/techrxiv.19341773.v1

DOI

10.36227/techrxiv.19341773.v1
 1

A Superior Iterative Transmitted-Reference

Pulse Cluster Ultra-Wideband System for
Ranging and Communication
Hassan Khani, Member, IEEE and Hong Nie, Member, IEEE

Abstract

Ultra-wideband (UWB) signals penetrate obstacles, achieve centimeter-level ranging ac-

curacy, and provide low-SNR communication. These features make UWB technology a good
candidate for applications demanding accurate ranging and low-power communication. Iterative
transmitted-reference pulse cluster (ITRPC) UWB system increases the data rate, the power
efficiency, and the accuracy of the time-of-arrival (ToA) estimation compared to the conventional
transmitted-reference pulse cluster system. Among the ranging techniques, ToA or its simpler
version time-difference-of-arrival scheme can perfectly exploit the ultra-wide bandwidth of UWB
signals to attain centimeter-level ranging accuracy. Hence, this paper considers ToA estimation
for ranging. This paper proposes a novel ITRPC system that significantly outperforms the
existing one. Simulation results show that the proposed analog ITRPC receiver improves the
ToA estimation by about 6 dB and enhances the symbol detection by about 1.5 dB. Moreover,
an accurate analysis is developed to calculate the bit-error probability of the proposed ITRPC
receiver in the presence of noise and monobit quantization. To the best of our knowledge, accurate
analysis of a data-aided pilot recovery system has not yet been reported in the literature. The
paper also covers some points for implementing and theoretical analysis of the proposed system.

This work is supported by the Quchan University of Technology under grant No. 95/5012. (Corresponding author:
Hassan Khani.)
H. Khani is with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Quchan University of Technology,
Quchan, Khorasan Razavi, 94771-67335, Iran, email: h.khani@qiet.ac.ir.
H. Nie is with the Sigma Microelectronics Co., Ltd, Huayuan Industrial Park, No. 18, Hatai West Road, Tianjin,
China, email: nieh@sigmachip.com.
IEEE DataPort DOI: 10.21227/wmsd-xm89

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Index Terms

Analog-to-digital conversion, iterative detection, monobit receiver, positioning, time of arrival,

transmitted-reference pulse cluster, ultra-wideband.

I. Introduction

Impulse radio (IR) ultra-wideband (UWB) systems have attractive features, such as high
capacity, fine time resolution, robustness against multipath, and coexistence with current
wireless systems via spectral-overlaying [1]. UWB signals penetrate obstacles [2]–[4] and
provide centimeter-level positioning accuracy due to their wide bandwidth [5]–[12]. These
features motivate the use of the IR-UWB technology for high-resolution positioning [13],
short-range high-rate wireless connectivity, and tracking purposes [14]. Thus, IR-UWB
technology is a good candidate for use in internet of things (IoT) [10], [15], navigation
[6], robotics [15]–[17], wireless body area networks [18], and wireless sensor networks [6],
[19]–[21]. For example, iPhone 11 is equipped with a UWB chip for spatial awareness [22].
UWB systems can also be used in medical applications requiring sub-millimeter accuracy
[17].
Time-based localization methods exploit the ultra-wide bandwidth of the UWB signals to
attain high positioning accuracy at the centimeter-level with low complexity [6], [8] (in time-
based localization methods, the positioning accuracy increases with the signal bandwidth
[2], [3], [23]). Among these techniques, the time-of-arrival (ToA) estimation technique has
the best performance [24]. Hence, this work uses ToA estimation for positioning.
UWB channels consist of many resolvable multipath components (MPCs) due to diffrac-
tion, refraction, and scattering effects [1], [25], [26]. Moreover, UWB channels exhibit path-
dependent [6], [11], [12], [27]–[29] and angle-dependent [30] distortions with overlapping
MPCs [7], [12], [30]. Therefore, coherent ToA estimation requires an extremely high sampling
rate and a very complex channel estimation [2], [6], [9], [12]. Hence, coherent ToA estimation
highly increases the cost and power consumption of the receiver and makes it impractical.
As a result, energy detection (ED)-based ToA estimation which is simple and requires a
sampling rate much less than the Nyquist rate has attracted a lot of interest [27], [28],
[31]–[34]. On the contrary, positioning methods based on machine learning [6], [16], [35]–
[38] or deep learning [39], [40] are computationally complex and impose delay in position

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updates [41]. Furthermore, these methods are challenging to train and depend on the trained
environment [41]. Moreover, they require simple environments with few MPCs [38]. Hence,
this paper considers the ED-based ToA estimation technique for positioning.
To capture more energy from UWB multipath channels with low complexity, high data
rate, and low power consumption, [19] proposes an iterative transmitted-reference pulse
cluster (ITRPC) system. It uses the detected data symbols of each block to enhance the
quality of the reference (pilot) pulse and then iteratively detects all data symbols in the
block. Therefore, it can achieve a considerable performance gain for ToA estimation and
data detection compared with the conventional TRPC system. This paper aims to address
the following question: Is further performance improvement possible for the ITRPC system
of [19] in terms of ToA estimation and data detection with a minimal increase in receiver
complexity? This study proposes a novel technique that highly improves the bit-error-rate
(BER) performance of the ITRPC system by excluding the data symbol under detection from
its demodulating reconstructed reference. Furthermore, this research applies the weighted-
transmitted reference (WTR) concept of [42] to the proposed ITRPC system to further
improve its BER performance and ToA estimation. Throughout this paper, the destructive
effect of the data symbol on its detection is referred to as self-effect. Thus, this paper
proposes a novel ITRPC system that excludes the self-effect of the data symbol under
detection from its corresponding reference and applies the WTR concept to the ITRPC
system to answer the research question.
Since analog (full-resolution) ITRPC systems need long analog delay lines with ultra-wide
bandwidth, which are difficult to implement, this paper mainly considers monobit ITRPC
receivers that have much lower complexity. Simulation results for the full-resolution receivers
are also presented for comparison. Throughout this paper, we refer to the existing ITRPC
receiver of [19] as ITRPCe and the novel ITRPC receiver as ITRPCn. This paper uses the
ITRPC system as a case study for the self-effect exclusion technology. Nevertheless, every
pilot-based data-aided communication system can use the proposed technology.
The main contributions of this paper are listed as follows:
1) An improved ITRPC system is proposed that greatly outperforms the existing one in
terms of BER by excluding the self-effect in symbol detection.
2) The WTR scheme is applied to the proposed ITRPC system to enhance its ToA

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estimation and symbol detection.

3) An accurate analytical framework is proposed for the first time to evaluate the BER
performance of the proposed ITRPC system at the presence of noise, monobit quantization,
and multipath. To the best of our knowledge, no exact analytical BER performance
evaluation for iterative-pilot recovery systems is reported in the literature due to its rigorous
and cumbersome calculations [19], [43], [44].
The paper structure is as follows: Section II presents the model of the ITRPCe and
the ITRPCn systems. It also introduces the ToA estimation method used in this paper.
Section III derives a theoretical framework to calculate the bit-error probability (BEP) of
the proposed monobit ITRPCn receiver. In Section IV, the uncoded BER performance of all
systems is numerically evaluated and compared, considering different parameters. Moreover,
Section IV compares the ToA estimation performance of both receivers and presents the
theoretical results for the BER performance of the proposed monobit ITRPC receiver.
Finally, Section V provides the concluding remarks.

II. System Model

A. The ITRPCe System

In [19], two ITRPC schemes have been proposed named ITRPC-1 and ITRPC-2. This
paper considers the ITRPC-2 scheme of [19] as it offers better performance and a higher
data rate. This paper refers to the ITRPC-2 scheme of [19] as the ITRPCe scheme. The
transmitted signal in the ITRPCe system for a block of Nb symbols can be expressed as
[19]:
√ [ Nf −1 ]
1 ∑ ∑
Nb
Eb Nb
st (t) = p(t) + √ di p(t − jTf − iTs ) , (1)
Nb + 1 Nf i=1 j=0

where p(t) is a unit-energy low-pass UWB pulse with a duration of Tp and a bandwidth of
B, di ∈ {−1, +1} is the ith binary-phase shift keying (BPSK) symbol, Ts denotes the symbol
duration, Tf is the frame length, Nf is the number of frames per symbol, and Eb is the
total transmitted energy per symbol. Note that the first pulse in (1) is the reference pulse,
and the other Nb Nf pulses are data pulses.
The received UWB signal can be expressed as rrec (t) = st (t) ∗ h(t) + n(t), where ∗ denotes
linear convolution; h(t) indicates the channel impulse response; and n(t) is an additive

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white Gaussian noise (AWGN) with a two-sided power spectral density of N0 /2. h(t) is a
∑
multipath channel that can be expressed as h(t) = Lk=1 αk δ(t − τk ), where αk and τk are
respectively the amplitude and time delay of the k th path, and δ(t) denotes Dirac Delta
function. Thus, τ1 is the desired ToA. In this paper, IEEE 802.15.3a channel model 4 is
used for h(t) [45]. The UWB signal at the output of the receiver front-end low-pass filter
(LPF) with an impulse response f(t) can be written as:

[ Nf −1 ]
√ ∑
Nb
di ∑
r(t) = Eb γ g(t) + √ g(t − jTf − iTs ) + v(t), (2)
i=1
N f j=0

Nb
where g(t) = p(t) ∗ h(t) ∗ f (t), γ = Nb +1 , and v(t) is the filtered AWGN. Note that the
bandwidth of the LPF is B, which matches the bandwidth of the transmitted signal. To
implement a monobit receiver, r(t) is digitized by a monobit analog-to-digital converter
(ADC) at the Nyquist rate as follows:
( )
r[n] , sign r(nT ) , (3)

where T = 1/(2B) denotes the Nyquist sampling period and sign(x) is a modified signum
function defined as: 



 +1, x ≥ 0
sign(x) = 
 (4)

 −1, x < 0

We assume that Tf = nT and Ts = ns T , where nf and ns are positive integers.

First, the ITRPCe receiver detects all data symbols in the block by using the reference
pulse. For example, the i th symbol in the block is detected by using the correlation between
the reference pulse and the corresponding Nf pulses of the i th symbol. The correlator output
for the j th frame of the i th symbol can be expressed as:
su −1
n∑
ri,j = r[n]r[n + ins + jnf ], (5)
n=0

where r[n] is the nth monobit sample of the reference pulse, r[n + ins + jnf ] denotes the nth
monobit sample of the j th frame of the i th symbol, and nsu is a positive integer denotes
the summation interval. In other words, nsu corresponds to the integration interval, Tint ,
in the analog receiver, i.e., Tint = nsu T . Hence the decision variable for the i th symbol is

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expressed as:
Nf −1
∑
ri = ri,j (6)
j=0

Thus, the i th BPSK symbol is estimated by dˆi = sign(ri ).

Then, the ITRPCe receiver employs an iterative algorithm to enhance the reference pulse
with the detected data pulses. First, the ITRPCe algorithm generates the following sets
from the correlator output ζ = [r1 , r2 , . . . , rNb ] as follows:

A1 = {i : ri ≥ 0}, A2 = {i : ri < 0} (7)

Hence, the sets A1 and A2 respectively correspond to the subscripts of the symbols detected
as +1 and −1. Let U1 = |A1 | and U2 = |A2 | indicate the cardinality of the sets. Next, the
following two signals are generated:
f −1
Uk N∑
1 ∑
Rk,I [n] = DAk (u),j [n], k ∈ {1, 2} (8)
Uk
u=1 j=0

where Ak (u) is the u th element of Ak in ascending order, and Di,j [n] = r[n + ins + jnf ] for
0 ≤ n < nsu . Then, the enhanced reference pulse in the ITRPCe receiver is calculated by:
R1,I [n] − R2,I [n]
RI [n] = (9)
2

Next, r[n] in (5) is replaced by the enhanced nonbinary reference pulse, RI [n], for the
second-round detection. The power of noise and inter-pulse interference (IPI) in the enhanced
reference pulse is significantly reduced due to the averaging process done in (8) and (9) [19].
Finally, the above steps are done iteratively to further enhance the detection performance.
Algorithm 1 shows the steps of the reference enhancement algorithm in the ITRPCe receiver,
where NI denotes the number of iterations [19].
According to (9), the ITRPCe receiver uses all data symbols in the reference enhancement.
Let assume that the i th symbol is under detection. As RI [n] contains the samples of this
symbol, multiplying RI [n] by the samples of this symbol gives Nb terms that are added
together. One of these terms is the self-multiplication of the samples of the symbol under
detection. If this symbol has been correctly detected in the previous iteration, no BER

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Algorithm 1 Steps of the Reference Enhancement Process in the Monobit ITRPCe Receiver
Proposed in [19].
1: Input: ζ, NI , Ts , Tf , Nb
2: k = 1
3: while k ≤ NI do
4: A1 = {i : ri ≥ 0}, i = 1, 2, . . . , Nb
5: A2 = {i : ri < 0}, i = 1, 2, . . . , Nb
6: U1 = |A1 | and U2 = |A2 |
∑U1 ∑Nf −1
7: R1,I [n] = U11 u=1 j=0 DA1 (u),j [n]
∑ U2 ∑ Nf −1
8: R2,I [n] = U12 u=1 j=0 DA2 (u),j [n]
R [n]−R [n]
9: RI [n] = 1,I 2 2,I
10: Update ri , U1 , U 2, and ζ
11: k = k+1
12: end while
13: Output: RI [n]

performance degradation is resulted. However, if the symbol has been detected incorrectly
in the previous iteration, BER performance severely degrades. This degradation is observed
because the self-effect of the symbol under detection dominates the effect of other Nb − 1
symbols after multiplication. In other words, this dominating term called self-effect prevents
equal contribution of other symbols and on the average severely deteriorates the detection
performance. Therefore, excluding the self-effect offers a great performance gain because it
removes the self-multiplication of the samples of a data symbol under detection and allows
equal contribution of other Nb − 1 symbols in the decision statistic. Excluding the self-effect
is the main contribution of this paper and will be presented in detail in the next subsection.
Besides including the self-effect, the ITRPCe receiver also has other drawbacks as follows.
First, although the data symbols are equiprobable, the number of negative and positive
data symbols in each block is not necessarily equal, i.e., U1 , U2 in most cases. Hence, using
equal combining weights for R1,I [n] and R2,I [n] in (9) is not optimal. Second, when the
detected symbols in the block are identical, i.e., U1 = 0 or U2 = 0, division by 0 is performed
in (8), and the ITRPCe becomes unstable. Third, the ITRPCe system does not include the
primary reference pulse for the reference enhancement. Last but not least, the energy of
the reference pulse is the same as that of the data pulses. Thus, the initial detection of the
data symbols has a poor performance, and it affects the converging speed of the iterative

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algorithm. In this paper, a novel ITRPC system, referred to as ITRPCn, is proposed that
can remove all the drawbacks mentioned above. As a result, it can considerably improve the
performance of both ToA estimation and data detection with almost the same complexity.

B. ITRPCn System

In the ITRPCn system, the transmitted signal for each block can be expressed as:

[ Nf −1 ]
β ∑ ∑
Nb
√
st (t) = Eb γ αp(t) + √ di p(t − jTf − iTs ) , (10)
Nf i=1 j=0

where α and β denote the weights of the reference and data pulses, respectively. The total
transmitted energy per bit is Eb when the equation α 2 + Nb β 2 = Nb holds. By increasing
α and decreasing β, more power can be allocated to the reference pulse to improve its
quality as the cornerstone of demodulation. Such allocation can significantly improve the
performance of both ToA estimation and data detection. More specifically, when the well-
known threshold crossing (TC) method is used for ToA estimation, allocating more power
to the reference pulse increases the accuracy of the ToA estimation as the reference pulse
is located at the leading edge of each block.
According to (10), the received UWB signal at the output of the receiver front-end LPF
can be written as:
[ Nf −1 ]
β ∑ ∑
Nb
√
r(t) = Eb γ αg(t) + √ di g(t − jTf − iTs ) + v(t) (11)
Nf i=1 j=0

Then, if we intend to have a monobit receiver, r(t) is digitized at the Nyquist rate by a
monobit ADC to obtain r[n].
At the first round of demodulation, the correlator output for the j th frame of the i th
symbol is computed as in (5). Then, the decision variable of the i th symbol is calculated as
in (6). Finally, the i th BPSK symbol is estimated as dˆ0 = sign(ri ), where the superscript is
i
the iteration index.
At the second round, the ITRPCn receiver iteratively enhances the quality of the reference
pulse by using both the primary reference pulse and the data pulses. The enhanced reference

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pulse in the k th iteration can be written as follows:

Nb N∑f −1
β ∑
RkW [n] = αR[n] + √ dˆik−1 r̃n,i,j (12)
Nf i=1 j=0

where R[n] is the primary reference pulse, r̃n,i,j = r[n + ins + jnf ], and dˆik indicates the
i th detected symbol after the k th iteration. Note that in (12), the corresponding weighting
coefficients as in (10) have been used for the reference pulse and data pulses. Algorithm 2
shows the steps of the reference reconstruction process in the proposed ITRPCn system.
Comparing Algorithm 2 with Algorithm 1 shows that the proposed ITRPCn algorithm
removes all the drawbacks of the ITRPCe algorithm and contains fewer steps. Moreover, it
exploits the original reference pulse, R[n], to construct RkW [n], unlike the ITRPCe algorithm.
Thus, it offers superior performance over the ITRPCe algorithm.

Algorithm 2 Steps of the Reference Enhancement Process in the Proposed Monobit ITRPCn
Receiver.
1: Input: ζ, NI , Ts , Tf , Nb
2: dˆi = sign(ri )
0

3: k = 1
4: while k ≤ NI do
β ∑Nb ∑Nf −1 ˆk−1
5: RkW [n] = αR[n] + √ i=1 j=0 di r̃n,i,j
Nf
6: Update ri and ζ
7: k = k+1
8: end while
9: Output: RW [n]

Replacing r[n] in (5) by RkW [n] yields:

su −1 {
n∑ Nb N∑f −1
β ∑ }
ri,j = αR[n] + √ dˆlk−1 r̃n,l,j r̃n,i,j
n=0
Nf l=1 j=0

su −1 {
n∑ ∑Nb N∑ f −1
β }
= αR[n]r̃n,i,j + √ dˆlk−1 r̃n,l,j r̃n,i,j
n=0
Nf l=1,l,i j=0

f −1
nsu −1 N∑
β ∑
+√ dˆik−1 r̃n,i,j
2
Nf n=0 j=0

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su −1 {
n∑ ∑Nb N∑ f −1
β }
= αR[n]r̃n,i,j + √ dˆlk−1 r̃n,l,j r̃n,i,j
n=0
Nf l=1,l,i j=0

βnsu Nf
+dˆik−1 √ (13)
Nf

The last term in (13) represents the self-effect in a frame that is obtained by using the fact
that for the monobit ADC r̃n,i,j = ±1 and hence r̃n,i,j
2
= 1. Obviously, the self-effect generates
an imbalance in symbol recovery, prevents equal contribution of other Nb −1 symbols in the
reference enhancement process, and leads to considerable performance degradation. Since
each symbol is transmitted over Nf frames, substituting (13) into (6) magnifies the frame
self-effect by Nf times. Hence, the overall self-effect for the i th symbol is obtained as:

βnsu Nf2 √
Self − ef f ect = dˆik−1 √ = dˆik−1 βnsu Nf Nf (14)
Nf

Therefore, to exclude the self-effect from the decision variable, the above-calculated self-effect
should be subtracted from ri of the conventional iterative-based reference/pilot recovery
system given in (6). Hence, in the newly proposed ITRPCn algorithm that excludes the
self-effect, the i th symbol in the k th iteration is detected based on the following decision
rule:
( √ )
ˆk ˆk−1
di = sign ri − di βnsu Nf Nf , (15)

The new decision rule completely cancels out the self-effect and allows the other Nb − 1
symbols to equally contribute to the reference enhancement process. As a result, it offers
much better performance than the ITRPCe receiver. Meanwhile, the complexity of the
ITRPCn receiver is almost the same as that of the ITRPCe receiver because as shown in
(15), the self-effect is excluded by using a simple subtract operation.
The ITRPCn system can be used in all analog and monobit pilot-based data-aided
iterative systems as a new reference enhancement (pilot recovery) technique. To the best of
our knowledge, the exact BER performance analysis of the iteration schemes has not been
done so far because of their complex and rigorous nature [19], [43], [44]. In the next section,
the BER performance of the ITRPCn receiver is theoretically analyzed and evaluated.

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C. ToA Estimation

In this subsection, we describe the ToA (also known as the time of flight (ToF)) estimation
method used in this paper. In ToA-based positioning techniques, the propagation delay
between the transmitter and the receiver is calculated. Then, it is multiplied by the speed
of the radio wave in the medium to calculate the distance between the transmitter and the
receiver. Many well-known positioning techniques such as ToA, time-difference of arrival
(TDoA), differential TDoA (DTDoA) recently proposed in [5], and return ToF (RToF)
schemes are based on ToA estimation. RToF is also known as two-way ranging.
In multipath channels, the ToA is defined as the arrival time of the first path (FP) of
the received signal r(t) and is denoted by ToA=τ1 . However, precise estimation of the ToA
is very difficult (if not impossible) in the presence of noise, multipath, and interference [19],
[46], [47]. A straightforward approach for estimating ToA is based on energy detection and
threshold crossing (TC) [3], [28], [34]. In this approach, each block duration, TB = (Nb +1)Ts ,
is divided into N bins of duration Tbin = TB /N , and the energy of the received signal in
each bin is calculated as follows:
∫ (l+1)Tbin
El = r 2 (t)dt, l = 0, 1, 2, ..., N − 1 (16)
lTbin

Note that using a small Tbin increases the ToA estimation accuracy at the expense of an
increase in the receiver memory and higher processing burden. There are two hypotheses
for a bin: i) a noise-only bin and ii) a signal-plus-noise bin. Therefore, a threshold shown
as λ is needed to distinguish bins that contain signal. After setting λ, the first bin whose
energy crosses λ is assumed as the bin of FP. Let assume that the mth bin is the first
bin whose energy crosses λ, where 0 ≤ m ≤ N − 1. In this case, the estimated ToA can be
calculated as:
τ̂1 = mTbin + Tbin /2 (17)

This technique for ToA estimation is called TC method. If λ is too small, early detection
before the FP is highly probable due to noise-only bins (k.a. early ToA estimation). On the
other hand, if λ is too large, the probability of detecting the FP dramatically decreases,
and the late detection of an erroneous path after the FP becomes more probable (k.a.
late ToA estimation). Hence, threshold setting is essential in TC method [3]. Optimal

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threshold setting requires the noise variance and signal characteristics at the output of the
receiver front-end filter. These requirements are difficult to obtain in the real world. Hence,
a suboptimal approach proposed in [19] sets the threshold as the mean energy of bins in a
block as follows:
1 ∑
N −1
λ= El (18)
N
l=0

Next, the index of the first bin that passes the threshold is calculated as:

m = min{l : El ≥ λ} l = 0, 1, 2, ..., N − 1 (19)

Finally, the estimation of ToA is obtained based on (17).

Another approach for ToA estimation assumes the bin with the maximum energy as the
bin containing FP. In this case, the time index m in (17) is determined by:

m = min{l : El = Emax } (20)

where Emax indicates the maximum value of El over l = 0, 1, 2, ..., N − 1. However, the path
with the maximum energy is not always the FP [2], [19], especially in NLOS channels. As a
result, maximum energy-based ToA estimation is less accurate than the mean energy-based
one. Therefore, in this paper, we use the mean energy-based ToA estimation. The mean
absolute error (MAE) of ToA estimation is defined as:

MAET oA = E{|τ̂1 − τ1 |} (21)

where E{x} denotes the statistical expectation of x. In this paper, the accuracy of the ToA
estimation is characterized by the MAE, i.e., smaller MAE indicates higher accuracy.

III. Theoretical Performance Analysis of the ITRPCn Receiver

In this section, by using the characteristic function (CF) of the decision variable, a
theoretical analysis framework is derived to calculate the BER performance of the proposed
ITRPCn receiver in the absence of IPI, and in the presence of noise, monobit quantization,
and multipath. Note that in the absence of IPI, each bit in a block has the same bit-error
probability (BEP). Furthermore, regardless of the transmitted bit, the BEP is the same
due to symmetry. Therefore, without loss of generality, the BEP of the i th bit of a block is

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derived by assuming that +1 is transmitted for that bit.

Denoting the nth monobit sample of the j th frame of the i th bit of the block by r̃n,i,j , its
conditional probability given di =+1 can be expressed as:




 1 − ξn , r̃n,i,j = +1
P (r̃n,i,j |di = +1) = 
 (22)

 ξ , r̃ = −1,
n n,i,j
( √ ) ∫ +∞ 2
where ξn = Q βg(nT ) Eb γ/(Nf N0 B) and Q(x) = √1 e−t /2 dt.
2π x
In the first round of demodulation, the conditional CF of ri when di = +1 is given as:
{ ∑Nf −1 ∑  }
js j=0
nsu −1
r[n]r̃n,i,j 

ϕri |di =+1 (s) = E e n=0
 di = +1 (23)

Due to sampling at the Nyquist rate, the samples of r[n] are independent. Similarly, the
samples of r̃n,i,j are independent. Moreover, the samples of r[n] and r̃n,i,j are independent
to each other. Hence, the above equation can be simplified to:
Nf −1 nsu −1
∏ ∏ {  }
ϕri |di =+1 (s) = E ejsr[n]r̃n,i,j  di = +1 (24)
j=0 n=0

The probability of the reference pulse samples, r[n], is obtained as:





 1 − εn , r[n] = +1
P (r[n]) = 
 (25)

 εn , r[n] = −1,
( √ )
where εn = Q αg(nT ) Eb γ/(N0 B) . Using (22), (25), and the fact that r[n] and r̃n,i,j are
independent to each other, (24) reduces to:
su −1 {
n∏ }Nf
ϕri |di =+1 (s) = ejs − j2(ξn + εn − 2ξn εn ) sin(s) (26)
n=0

Based on the modified inversion theorem proposed in [44], the conditional BEP of the
i th bit of the block given di = +1 can be evaluated as:

BEPi|di =+1 = P (ri < 0|di = +1)

∫ { }
1 +∞ Im ϕri |di =+1 (s)
= 0.5 − ds, (27)
π 0+ s

March 10, 2022 DRAFT

 14

where Im{x} denotes the imaginary part of x. Because of symmetry, BEPi|di =+1 = BEPi|di =−1 .
Therefore, the BEP at the output of the first stage is obtained as:

P0 = BEPi|di =+1 P (di = +1) + BEPi|di =−1 P (di = −1) = BEPi|di =+1 (28)

where the subscript in Pk shows the iteration number, i.e., P0 is the BEP before the first
iteration.
The operations of the k th (k ≥ 1) iteration are the same as that of the first stage except
that r[n] in (5) is replaced by RkW [n], and the detection rule given in (15) is used for
self-effect exclusion. An equivalent demodulation approach is use the following enhanced
reference pulse for the i th symbol to calculate ri and then apply a simple decision rule of
dˆk = sign(ri ):
i
∑Nb N∑ f −1
β
Ri,k
W [n] = αR[n] + √ dˆk−1 r̃n,l,j (29)
Nf l=1,l,i j=0 l

The original method (i.e. using (12) and (15)) eases the implementation and the equivalent
approach (i.e. using (29) and dˆk = sign(ri )) eases the theoretical analysis of the proposed
i
receiver. It is seen that using (29) and the simple decision rule of dˆik = sign(ri ) or equivalently
employing RW [n] and the decision rule of (15) excludes the self-effect of the i th symbol in
its decision variable. Thus, all the remaining data pulses equally contribute to the decision
variable, and detection error in dˆik does not severely dominate its corresponding decision
variable. As a result, much better performance is yielded. We remark that using (29) and
the simple decision rule of dˆik = sign(ri ) is better for theoretical analysis and employing its
equivalent, i.e., RW [n] and the decision rule of (15), is better for implementation. Since
the latter one only needs one enhanced reference pulse and avoids having Nb symbol-
specific enhanced reference pulses, it eases the receiver implementation by reducing the
computational burden and memory usage. This in return extends the battery life that is
crucial for IoT devices.
In the k th (k ≥ 1) iteration, the decision variable ri of the ITRPCn algorithm is given as:
Nf −1 nsu −1
∑ ∑
ri = Ri,k
W [n]r̃n,i,j (30)
j=0 n=0

March 10, 2022 DRAFT

 15

and hence the conditional characteristic function of ri given di = +1 can be obtained as:
{ ∑Nf −1 ∑  }
RW [n]r̃n,i,j 
nsu −1 i,k
js j=0
ϕri |di =+1 (s) = E e n=0
 di = +1 (31)

Again the samples of Ri,k

W [n] are independent due to sampling at the Nyquist rate. Hence,
the above equation can be simplified to:
Nf −1 nsu −1 {  }
∏ ∏
E ejsRW [n]r̃n,i,j  di = +1
i,k
ϕri |di =+1 (s) = (32)
j=0 n=0

By using the conditional probability of r̃n,i,j given in (22), the above equation can be
rewritten as:
Nf −1 [
su −1 ∏
n∏ ]
i,k i,k
ϕri |di =+1 (s) = E{ejsRW [n] }(1 − ξn ) + E{e−jsRW [n] }ξn
n=0 j=0

su −1 [
n∏ ]Nf
i,k i,k
= E{ejsRW [n] }(1 − ξn ) + e−jsRW [n] }ξn (33)
n=0

Using the definition of Ri,k

W [n] in (29), we have:
 { ∑Nb ∑Nf −1 ˆk−1
}

 √β 
n,l,j 
jsRi,k [n]


js αR[n]+
Nf l=1,l,i j=0 d l r̃ 

E{e W } = E   e 
 (34)

 


Since R[n] and r̃n,l,j are independent to each other, (34) can be rewritten as follows:
 
sβ ∑Nb ∑Nf −1 ˆk−1
i,k { } 



j√
Nf l=1,l,i j=0 dl r̃n,l,j 



jsRW [n] jsαR[n]
E{e }=E e E
e 
 (35)

 


Since R[n] = r[n] for 0 ≤ n ≤ nsu − 1 in the absence of IPI, using (25) yields the following
result for the first expectation on the right hand side (RHS) of (35):
{ }
E ejsαR[n] = ejsα (1 − εn ) + e−jsα εn (36)

Let define Si as the index set of the Nb symbols except for the i th symbol, Sc as the index
set of the correctly detected symbols in Si , and Se as the index set of the erroneous symbols
in Si . Hence, Sc and Se are complement sets over Si , i.e., Sc ∪Se = Si . Let Nek be the number

March 10, 2022 DRAFT

 16

of elements in Se before the k th iteration. Thus, Nek is a binomial random variable with
 Nb − 1  ne
probability mass function of P (Nek = ne ) =   P (1−Pk−1 )Nb −ne −1 , where Pk indicates
 k−1
n e
the BEP after the k th iteration. Using the fact that r̃n,l,j and r̃n,l ′ ,j ′ are independent for
l , l ′ or j , j ′ , the second expectation on the RHS of (35) can be written as:
 
 sβ ∑Nb ∑Nf −1 ˆk−1 

 j √ d r̃ n,l,j 

 Nf l=1,l,i j=0 l 
Ee 


 

 ∑Nb ∑Nf −1 ˆk−1

 
∑
Nb −1
 j√
sβ
r̃n,l,j  


 l=1,l,i j=0 dl 
= E e
Nf
 N = ne 
k
 P (Nek = ne )

  e 

ne =0  

Nf −1  sβ   
∑ b −1 ∏ ∏  j √ dl r̃n,l,j  ∏  −j √ dl r̃n,l,j 
N sβ

 Nf 
 
 Nf 

= E
e 
 E
e 

   
ne =0 j=0 l∈Sc l∈Se

b −1
 Nf [Nb −ne −1]
∑
N
 j √Nf
sβ
−j √
sβ

×P (Nek = ne ) = e (1 − ξ ) + e Nf
ξ 
 n n 
ne =0

 Nf ne  
 −j √sβN j√
sβ
  N − 1 
   b  ne
ξn   Pk−1 (1 − Pk−1 )Nb −ne −1
Nf
× e f
(1 − ξn ) + e  (37)
   n 
e

i,k i,k
Substituting (36) and (37) into (35) yields E{ejsRW [n] }. Then, plugging E{ejsRW [n] } and
its complex conjugate into (33) gives ϕri |di =+1 (s). Finally, substituting ϕri |di =+1 (s) into (27)
yields Pk , the BEP after the k th iteration.

IV. Results and Discussions

This section evaluates the uncoded BER performance of the proposed ITRPCn receiver
through both theoretical analysis and computer simulation over the IEEE 802.15.3a channel
model 4 (CM4) in the absence of IPI, and in the presence of noise, monobit quantization,
and multipath. First, the effect of the number of iterations on the BER/BEP performance
of the ITRPCe and ITRPCn receivers is investigated. The paper uses a Kaiser-windowed
sinc(1e9t) pulse for p(t). Hence, the transmitted pulse is an FCC-compliant pulse with a
-10dB bandwidth of 500MHz and a duration of 16 ns. The simulations are carried out with
the ADC sampling frequency of 1 GHz (Nyquist sampling), Nb = 10 or 50, Nf = 1, Tbin = 1

March 10, 2022 DRAFT

 17

ns, and Tf = Tint = Ts = 100 ns.

In the paper, the prefixes MB and FR indicate the receivers with a monobit ADC and a
full-resolution ADC, respectively. Moreover, the suffixes Inc and Exc denote the ITRPCn
receiver with self-effect inclusion and exclusion, respectively. We include the results for the
ITRPCn-Inc system to investigate the performance gain caused by the self-effect exclusion
in the ITRPCn-Exc. We remark that the performance gain of the ITRPCn-Inc over the
ITRPCe is brought by including the original reference pulse in RkW [n], applying the WTR
scheme to the ITRPCe system, and including all the data pulses with the same coefficient to
form RkW [n]. Additionally, the performance gain of the ITRPCn-Exc over the ITRPCn-Inc
is brought by excluding the self-effect of the symbol under detection in its decision variable.
Extensive simulations showed that for BER values less than 0.001, a proper value for
β/α is 0.525 for all the proposed receivers. Therefore, β/α is fixed at 0.525 in the following
discussions. The BER performance of both the FR-ITRPCe and FR-ITRPCn receivers
versus the number of iterations, NI , is depicted in Fig. 1 for Nb = 10 and Eb /N0 =10 dB.
Fig. 2 shows the effect of NI on the BER performance of both MB-ITRPCe and MB-ITRPCn
receivers for Nb = 10 and Eb /N0 = 13 dB. It is seen that no matter applying the monobit
ADC or the full-resolution ADC, the performance of the receivers is nearly saturated after
the first iteration. Therefore, NI = 1 is used in the sequel. Note that in Figs. 1 and 2, when
there is no iteration (NI = 0), the improvement of the ITRPCn systems over the ITRPCe
ones is obtained by allocating a larger weight to the reference pulse than that to the data
β
pulses, i.e., α < 1 in the ITRPCn systems.
Fig. 3 illustrates the BER performance of various receivers versus the number of bits
per block, Nb , for Eb /N0 = 10 dB, which depicts a saturation in the performance for large
values of Nb .
Figs. 2-3 show that the theoretical results for the monobit ITRPCn receiver excluding
the self-effect match well with the simulation results. Thus, the theoretical analysis given
in Section III is validated. Furthermore, Figs. 1-3 show the superior performance of the
ITRPCn receiver over the ITRPCe receiver, especially when the self-effect is excluded in
the enhanced reference.
Figs. 4 and 5 depict the BER performance of different receivers versus SNR for Nb = 10

March 10, 2022 DRAFT

 18

-1
10

10-2
BER

10-3

ITRPCe
ITRPCn-Inc
ITRPCn-Exc
10-4
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
NI

Figure 1. The effect of the number of iterations, NI , on the BER performance of the FR-ITRPCe and the FR-ITRPCn
receivers for Nb = 10 and Eb /N0 =10 dB.

✲✞
✶✵

✲✝
✶✵
✄
❇✂
✁
❇
✲✆
✶✵

✟✠✡☛☞✌
✟✠✡☛☞✍✎✟✍✏
✟✠✡☛☞✍✎✑✒✏✓ ✔✕✖✗
✟✠✡☛☞✍✎✑✒✏✓ ✠✘✌✙✗
✲☎
✶✵
✵ ✶ ✷ ✸ ✹ ✺ ✻ ✼ ✽ ✾ ✶✵
◆
■

Figure 2. The effect of the number of iterations, NI , on the BER performance of the MB-ITRPCe and the
MB-ITRPCn receivers for Nb = 10 and Eb /N0 =13 dB.

March 10, 2022 DRAFT

 19

✶ ✵
▼✛✜✛✢✣✤ ■☛☞✌✍✎
■☛☞✌✍✏✑■✏✒
✶ ✲✡ ■☛☞✌✍✏✑✓✔✒✕ ✖✗✘
■☛☞✌✍✏✑✓✔✒✕ ☛✙✎✚

✶ ✲✠
☎
✁
❇✄ ✲✟
✂ ✶
✁
❇
✶ ✲✞

✶ ✲✝
❋✥✦✦✧★✩✪✛✦✥✤✣✛✜
✶ ✲✆
✶ ✷ ✸ ✹ ✺ ✻ ✼ ✽ ✾ ✶
◆❜

Figure 3. The effect of the number of bits per block, Nb , on the BER performance of the monobit and full-resolution
ITRPCe and ITRPCn receivers for NI =1 and Eb /N0 =10 dB.

✶☎☞

✶☎✲☛
▼✰✸✰✺✳✱
✶☎✲✡ ❋✫✬✬✤✭✮✯✰✬✫✱✳✰✸
✝✆
❇
✶☎✲✠

■✌✍✎✏✑
✶☎✲✟ ■✌✍✎✏✒✓■✒✔
■✌✍✎✏✒✓✕✖✔✗ ✘✙✚✛
■✌✍✎✏✒✓✕✖✔✗ ✌✜✑✢✛
✶☎✲✞
☎ ✷ ✹ ✻ ✽
✶☎ ✶✷ ✶✹ ✶✻ ✶✽ ✷☎
❊ ❜ ✴ ✵ ✥✁✂✄
✤✶✦✧✹ ✤✶★✧✹ ✤✶✩✧✹ ✤✶✶✧✹ ✤✪✧✹ ✤✦✧✹ ✤★✧✹ ✤✩✧✹ ✤✶✧✹ ☎✧✻ ✷✧✻
❙ ✣ ✥✁✂✄

Figure 4. BER performance of different receivers for Nb = 10 and NI = 1.

March 10, 2022 DRAFT

 20

Ps Eb /Tb Eb
and Nb = 50, respectively. Note that in these figures, SNR is defined as = = N0 W Tb ,
Pv σv2
(Nb +1)Ts
where Tb = Nb is the equivalent bit duration in a block with Nb data pulses.
Because the probability of having an all-zero or an all-one detected block (i.e., when all
the detected bits of the block are identical) is 2
= 2−Nb +1 , the probability of having U1 = 0
2Nb
or U2 = 0 in (8), which results in division by 0, is 2−Nb +1 . As a result, the error floor for
the ITRPCe receiver at high SNR values is 2−Nb +1 , which is around 0.002 for Nb = 10 as
shown in Fig. 4. Note that the ITRPCn receiver does not exhibit any error floor in its BER
performance. In the ITRPCe receiver, a larger value of Nb should be used to decrease the
error floor. For example, with Nb = 50, the error floor is 2−49 = 1.8e − 15. Thus, no error
floor is observed for the ITRPCe receiver in the BER region shown in Fig. 5. However,
the maximum value of Nb is limited to ⌊ TTcoh
s
⌋ − 1, where Tcoh denotes the channel coherence
time and ⌊x⌋ represents the largest integer that is less than or equal to x. Hence, in fast
varying channels with a short channel coherence time, the maximum possible value for Nb
is small, and as a result, the error floor at high SNR is inevitable for the ITRPCn receiver.
This is one of the main drawbacks of the ITRPCe receiver that is completely removed by
the proposed ITRPCn receiver.
Fig. 4 shows that for Nb = 10 and at BER=0.01, the MB-ITRPCn-Exc receiver outper-
forms the MB-ITRPCe one by 3.5 dB, and the FR-ITRPCn-Exc receiver outperforms the
FR-ITRPCe one by 2.5 dB. Meanwhile, Fig. 5 shows that for Nb = 50 and at BER=0.001,
the MB-ITRPCn-Exc receiver outperforms the MB-ITRPCe one by 1.9 dB, and the FR-
ITRPCn-Exc receiver outperforms the FR-ITRPCe one by 1.5 dB. Furthermore, comparing
Figs. 4 and 5 shows that the performance gain offered by the ITRPCn-Exc receiver over
the ITRPCe receiver increases as Nb decreases. This is obvious because in the enhanced
reference pulse of a block of Nb symbols, the effect of the desired symbol to the effect of
other symbols is 1 to Nb −1. Hence, the self-effect to the effect of other symbols increases as
Nb decreases. In other words, the self-effect is more dominant for smaller values of Nb and
as a result, excluding the self-effect for a smaller value of Nb provides a higher performance
gain. Moreover, Figs. 4 and 5 reveal that the performance gain of the proposed receiver is
more considerable when monobit ADC is used. This implies that unlike the full-resolution
ADC that preserves the SNR, a monobit digitization drastically reduces the SNR of the
output signal. Therefore, the reference enhancement process that aims to increase the SNR

March 10, 2022 DRAFT

 21

✶☎✍

✶☎✲✌
▼✳✼✳✾✺✸
✟✆ ✶☎✲☞ ❋✭✮✮✧✯✰✱✳✮✭✸✺✳✼
✞❇✝
✆❇ ✲☛
✶☎

■✎✏✑✒✓
✶☎✲✡ ■✎✏✑✒✔✕■✔✖
■✎✏✑✒✔✕✗✘✖✙ ✚✛✜✢
■✎✏✑✒✔✕✗✘✖✙ ✎✣✓✤✢
✶☎✲✠
☎ ✷ ✹ ✻ ✽ ✶☎ ✶✷ ✶✹
❊❜ ✴ ✵ ✥✁✂✄
✧✶★✩☎✽ ✧✶✪✩☎✽ ✧✶✫✩☎✽ ✧✶✶✩☎✽ ✧✬✩☎✽ ✧★✩☎✽ ✧✪✩☎✽ ✧✫✩☎✽
❙ ✦ ✥✁✂✄

Figure 5. BER performance of different receivers for Nb = 50 and NI = 1.

of the reference pulse achieves a higher performance gain when monobit ADC is employed.
Finally, Figs. 4 and 5 illustrate that the theoretical analysis results match well with the
simulation results for the MB-ITRPCn-Exc receiver.
Fig. 6 depicts the MAE of the ToA estimation in nanoseconds (ns) and MAE of location
estimation in meters (m) for both ITRPCe and ITRPCn systems. Since the center of the
first bin whose energy crosses the threshold is estimated as the ToA, the minimum value of
MAE of the ToA estimation at high SNR values for Tbin = 1 ns is calculated as [27], [32],
[33]:
MAETmin
oA = E{|τ1 − 0.5|} = 0.25 ns (38)

where τ1 is the desired ToA which is uniformly distributed in [0, 1] ns. Fig. 6 shows that the
ITRPCn can achieve the lower bound of the MAE of the ToA estimation given in (38) for
high SNR values, which is equivalent to an MAE of 10 cm for location estimation. Moreover,
it is seen that the ITRPCn system provides about 6 dB performance gain over the ITRPCe
system for SNR≤ 6.6 dB. This performance gain is mainly obtained by allocating more
power to the reference pulse that leads the block.

March 10, 2022 DRAFT

 22

✶✷✡
■✚✛✜✢✣
■✚✛✜✢✤
✟ ✗
✶✷
✗✏ ✖✓
✕✖ ✕
✕ ✌✒
✌✒ ✟ ✑
✑ ✶✷ ✔
✔ ✒✓✑
✒✓✑ ✏
☞
✏
☞ ✶✷✠ ✕
✌✒
☛ ✑
✌ ✔✙
✎ ✌
✍
✌ ✶✷✠ ✘
✍
☞ ✌
☛ ☞
▼ ✲✟ ☛
✶✷ ▼

✲✟
✶✷
✶ ✶✁ ✶✂ ✶✄ ✷ ✁ ✂ ✄ ✸✷
❊ ✴☎ ✥✆✝✞
❜ ✵
✦✧★✁ ✦✸★✁ ✦✶★✁ ✷★✂ ★✂ ✁★✂ ✂★✂ ✄★✂ ✶✷★✂ ✶ ★✂
❙☎✩ ✥✆✝✞

Figure 6. Mean absolute error (MAE) of ToA estimation and MAE of the location estimation of the ITRPCe and
the proposed ITRPCn receivers versus SNR for Nb = 10.

V. Conclusions

This paper proposed a novel ITRPC system titled as ITRPCn for UWB ranging and
communication systems. Besides, it developed an accurate theoretical analysis to calculate
the bit-error probability of the proposed system in the presence of noise, monobit quantiza-
tion, and multipath. The simulation results well matched the theoretical results and verified
the derived theoretical framework. It was shown that the ITRPCn system has a superior
BER and ToA estimation performance over the conventional ITRPC (ITRPCe) system.
The proposed system allocates more power to the reference pulse than the ITRPCe system.
Hence, the ToA of the first path can be estimated much more accurately in the ITRPCn
system. Simulations showed that the proposed system achieves about 6 dB performance
gain over the existing system in ToA estimation. Moreover, it was shown that excluding
the contribution of the samples of the symbol under detection in its decision statistic
can greatly improve the BER performance. Obtained results showed that the monobit
and full-resolution ITRPCn receivers respectively achieve more than 1.9 dB and 1.5 dB
BER performance gain over the corresponding ITRPCe receivers at BER=0.001 in IEEE
802.15.3a channel model 4 (CM4) with a negligible increase in the receiver complexity.

March 10, 2022 DRAFT

 23

Furthermore, unlike the ITRPCe receiver, the ITRPCn receiver did not exhibit an error
floor in its BER performance. The proposed self-effect exclusion technology was applied to
the ITRPC system as a case study. However, it can be used in any pilot-based data-aided
communication or ranging system and achieve similar performance gain.

References

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multiple access communications,” IEEE Trans. Commun., vol. 48, no. 4, pp. 679–691, Apr. 2000.
[2] S. Wang, G. Mao, and J. A. Zhang, “Joint time-of-arrival estimation for coherent uwb ranging in multipath
environment with multi-user interference,” IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, vol. 67, no. 14, pp. 3743–
3755, Jul. 2019.
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