Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 4
Hardware Architectures
for IR-UWB-Based Transceivers
Abstract Impulse Radio-Ultra-wideband (IR-UWB) is an attractive wireless
technology for Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) applications. Low power
transmitter design and low complexity hardware implementation present the
possibility of developing sensor nodes with small form factors with high data rate
capability. A UWB transceiver is the core unit required in a UWB based WBAN
system that provide wireless communications. It determines critical properties of
the WBAN, such as data rate and power consumption. This chapter focuses on the
hardware implementation of UWB based sensor nodes for WBAN applications.
Different realizations of UWB transceiver architectures are described and a critical
analysis of their suitability for WBAN applications is presented. In addition,
different UWB pulse generation techniques are discussed.
Keywords UWB transmitters
UWB receivers
UWB pulse generation
Hardware implementation
Base band pulse generators
Up-conversion pulse
generators
Coherent UWB receivers
Non-coherent UWB receivers
AcR
receivers
Transmit-only hardware
4.1 Introduction
UWB transceivers are the main building blocks of any UWB sensor node. UWB
transmitters are simple in design and consume a smaller amount of power com-
pared to their narrow band counterparts. An IR-UWB transmitter design consists
of an UWB pulse generator. IR-UWB pulse generators can be divided into sub-
categories, such as base band pulse generators and up-conversion pulse generators.
IR-UWB receivers are more complex in design and consume larger amount of
power than IR-UWB transmitters. This poses a challenge to use IR-UWB tech-
nology in low-power WBAN devices. It is possible to investigate alternative
approaches that lead to incorporating advantages provided by IR-UWB transmit-
ters, while avoiding the disadvantages of using IR-UWB receivers in wearable and
