A Sub-band based Technique for Low Power Medium Data Rate Ultra Wide Band Communication

Kiran Bynam, Jinesh P. Nair, Debarati Sen, Rahul Sinha, Arun Naniyat
Samsung India Software Operations, Bangalore, India {kiran.bynam, jinesh.p, debarati.sen, sinha.rahul, arun.naniyat}@samsung.com
Abstract A sub-band based ultra wideband (SUWB) system is proposed. The technique provides scope for using the ultra wideband bandwidth efficiently by exploiting the available link margin for short range communications. The bandwidth of 500 MHz or more is divided into a fixed number of subbands. The data transmission scheme over multiple sub-bands can be designed to achieve higher data rate, higher reliability or support multi-user access. The SUWB system facilitates low power implementations by reducing the sampling rate requirements and also by the use of an orthogonal spreading code based interference rejection and multi-path cancellation receiver. The SUWB system avoids the need for individual down-conversion and filtering of the sub-bands. The requisite properties of the spreading codes are also provided. The simulation results in terms of the BER performance of the method for the IEEE 802.15.4a channel models are presented. The desirable performance is obtained for low and medium delay spread channels even without employing any equalization method. Keywords Sub-banding, Ultra wide band, SUWB.

sub-band (SUWB) technology proposed can cater to such applications that require medium data rate or high performance such as personal area networks, wireless sensor networks. The SUWB technology provides scope for using the bandwidth efficiently by exploiting the available link margin for short range communications. In this technology, the bandwidth of 500 MHz or more is divided into N number of sub-bands. An appropriate combination of the sub-bands can be used to achieve required data rate or higher reliability depending on the requirements. Sub-bands can also be used for communication between two or more different set of nodes providing scope for multi-user access. The use of sub-banding for UWB offers several advantages. It facilitates low power implementations by reducing system sampling rate requirements. The SUWB system provides better bandwidth utilization through fine control of transmit power spectral density while meeting the spectral mask requirements. The bandwidth of the sub-bands can be made wide enough to allow a combination of options including direct sequence spreading, OFDM and impulse modulation. Another advantage of SUWB is the application of the conventional modulation schemes like M-PSK, and FSK which adds flexibility to the implementation of the technology depending on the requirements compared with IR-UWB. The narrow band interference problem can be mitigated to an extent by virtue of the use of frequency diversity. Additionally, an orthogonal spreading code based receiver is proposed to further reduce the receiver complexity. The spreading code enables interference rejection of unwanted sub-bands, multi-path cancellation and also avoids the need for explicit down conversion and filtering of the sub-bands. This additional reduction in the complexity is obtained at a cost of data rate. The properties of the spreading sequences required for interference rejection and multi-path cancellation are described. The BER performance of the proposed system is simulated for IEEE 802.15.4a channel models [5] to demonstrate the efficacy of the method. From the simulation results it is seen that such a receiver may be used to obtain a desirable BER performance for low and medium delay spread channels without the use of any equalization. The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section II describes the motivation and system description. The system model of the SUWB scheme is presented in Sec. III. The

I. INTRODUCTION Since the release of ultra wide band spectrum (UWB) ranging from 3.1 GHz to 10.6 GHz for unlicensed short range wireless communication, several technologies like Impulse radio (IR-UWB), multi-band orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (MB-OFDM), Chaotic-UWB, frequency modulated UWB (FM-UWB) have been proposed for the use of this band [1]- [4]. While IR-UWB and FM-UWB are low power solutions there are several disadvantages of these systems [1] and [2]. IR-UWB is susceptible to narrow-band interference and the applications requiring good error rate performance cannot be supported. Currently, IR-UWB allows the usage of only BPSK and PPM modulation schemes. Though FM-UWB has the potential of delivering medium data rates at moderate complexity, it may be perceived that this technology does not use the bandwidth efficiently. MB-OFDM can support the data rates of hundreds of mega bits per second but it is too complex for short range communications [3]. This complexity is due to the use of FFT and IFFT engines which also increase the cost. For applications that require cost effectiveness, medium data rate, and narrow band interference rejection simultaneously, the above technologies are not suitable. The

978-1-4244-2519-8/10/$26.00 2010 IEEE

simulation results are explained in Sec. IV and conclusions are drawn in Sec. V. II. MOTIVATION AND PROPOSED SYSTEM DESCRIPTION Two critical factors influencing the transmit power between two nodes in a communication system are the path loss of the channel and the minimum SNR required by the receiver for reliable reception. In the existing art, the general power control algorithms distribute the required transmit power across the whole band uniformly. However in scenarios, where the link margin is high this is an inefficient way of utilizing the transmission bandwidth. Some of the bandwidth may be released for other purposes by reducing the link margin. The link margin in this scenario is the difference between the maximum transmit power possible in the whole band chosen following FCC directives and the minimum transmit power. This involves increasing the transmit power. However, in short range wireless networks the power efficiency is mainly governed by the MAC processing and the receiver processing power. The impact of the transmission power (Watts/Hz) is insignificant in comparison to these two factors. Hence increasing the power within the limits set by the maximum transmission power allowed by the system, has negligible effect on the power efficiency. The proposed SUWB system provides a mechanism facilitating the trade-off of the above mentioned aspects of the power and bandwidth for a fixed power spectral density. Hence the system achieves power efficient communication with medium data rates over short ranges. Importantly, the technique of sub-banding allows for a reduction in complexity by facilitating lower sampling rate system implementations. In the SUWB system, the UWB bandwidth of B 500 MHz or more is sub-divided into N number of sub-bands. SUWB proposes a way to make use of these sub-bands efficiently for short range communications. This also provides scope for processing the data at a lower sampling rate of B / N Hz, thus significantly improving the power efficiency. Also, we can use any kind of M-ary modulation like M-PSK, M-FSK etc which will increase the data rate in comparison to IR-UWB. The different ways of using the sub-bands for bandwidth efficient transmission are Method 1: Using the sub-bands for transmitting the same data for the same user for increasing the performance Method 2: Using the sub-bands for sending the different data of the same user to increase the data rate of the user Method 3: Using the sub-bands for different users which will enable the low latency transmission of the medium rate data. III. SYSTEM MODEL In this section the proposed transmitter and receiver of the SUWB system are explained. The various critical system parameters and design choices are provided.

These are then multiplied by the orthogonal spreading code ck (nT0 ) having chip duration T0 = N / B s. k (nT0 ) = sk (nT0 )ck (nT0 ) x (1) The spreading code used here has multiple functionalities. Primarily it is used for sub-band selection at the receiver with low complexity. By its use, the need for separate downconversion and filtering of the sub-bands are avoided. A proper design of the spreading codes also enables multi-path cancellation. Moreover, the processing gain associated with the spreading improves the SNR by a factor of P = Tc / T0 . Here Tc represents the symbol duration. Equation (1) is then interpolated by Ts = 1/ B s to obtain xk (nTs ) . Ideal low pass interpolation is assumed here. The sub-band signals are then combined to form the SUWB signal at base-band. z ( nTs ) =
N / 2 k = N / 2

xk (nTs )e j 2 f0 knTs

(2)

These are then converted to analogue signals and presented to the RF stage for transmission. Equation (2) captures the generalized scenario wherein different data occupies different bands. These data may be associated with the same user or different users. If the data is associated with different bands and different users, two levels of spreading codes are required for distinguishing between bands and users. If the same data is transmitted over some N 0 number of bands out of the N bands, then xk (nTs ) refers to the same data x0 (nTs ) = s0 (nTs )c0 (nTs ) in those bands. Associated with this redundancy is a gain in the SNR by a factor N 0 resulting in an improved BER performance. As a general example, we consider the case where in { B0 } is the set of N 0 bands transmitting the same data for a user and B0' be the set of remaining bands allocated to the other users. Equation (2) can be represented as
z ( nTs ) = B. Channel impulse response h ( nTs ) . We consider the IEEE 802.15.4a channel models for the 2-10 GHz range [5]. The SalehValenzuela model for the multi-path components is adopted in these models. The channel impulse response is expressed as The transmitted signal z ( nTs ) convolves with the channel
k {B0 }

{ }

x0 (nTs )e j 2 f0 knTs +

{ }
' B0

xk (nTs )e j 2 f0 knTs

(3)

h ( nTs ) = av ,l e
l =0 v = 0

jv ,l

( nTs Tl v ,l )

(4)

Where av ,l is the tap weight of the v th component in the

l th cluster, Tl is the delay of the l th cluster and v ,l is the delay

A. SUWB Transmitter The incoming binary data for the k th band are mapped to symbols sk (nT0 ) depending on the modulation format used.

of the v th multi-path component relative to the l th cluster arrival time and the phases v ,l are uniformly distributed in

the range of [0, 2 ] .

C. SUWB Receiver The received signal after being subjected to the additional AWGN w(nTs ) at the receiver front end is given by

1) Data Detection and Interference Rejection: To investigate on the interference rejection mechanism for the unwanted sub-bands, we consider an AWGN channel. Hence h(nTs ) = (nTs ) . From equations (3) and (10) we see that
 (nPT0 ) = s k{B0 } + w(nPT0 )
n=n

(5) An equivalent representation of the above from equations (2) and (5) is given by
y ( nTs ) =
N / 2
k = N / 2

y ( nTs ) = z ( nTs ) h ( nTs ) + w(nTs )

1 Tc

n +Tc 1

x0 (nTs )e j 2 f0 knTs +

xk (nTs )e j 2 f0 knTs c0 ( nT0 ) ' k { B0 }

(11)

xk (nTs ) hk (nTs )e

j 2 f 0 knTs

+ w(nTs )

(6)

Here hk ( nTs ) represents the equivalent sub-band responses centred on zero frequency of the k th sub-band. Since the individual sub-bands are disjoint from each other, the cross terms involved in the convolution in (5) can be assumed to be negligible. Sub-banding enables lower sampling rate and hence improves the power efficiency. In this case sub-banding facilitates the subsequent receiver processing at a reduced rate of B / N Hz instead of processing at a higher rate of B Hz. The received signal is down sampled by a factor of N to obtain samples spaced with separation T0 .  ( nT0 ) = y ( nNTs ) y (7) Conventionally, receiver processing in a sub-band system involves separate down-conversion and filtering of the individual sub-bands or some equivalent orthogonal transformation realizing the same. To avoid this and further reduce the receiver complexity, we propose a sub-sampled receiver with interference rejection capabilities of the unwanted sub-bands using orthogonal spreading codes. Also the codes are required to be designed to minimize the impact of multi-path effects of the channel. Let the signal of interest be s0 (nT0 ) . The multi-path and interference rejection receiver consists of the following operation 1 n +Tc 1  (nPT0 ) =  ( mT0 )c0 ( mT0 ) s (8) y Tc m = n
Here P = Tc / T0 . We assume perfect synchronization and investigate on the effects of the sub-band interference and channel on the receiver performance. Making use of (5), (6) and (7), (8) can be expressed as
 ( nPT0 ) = s 1 Tc
n + Tc 1

From (1), (11) and the correlation properties of the spreading codes we have (12)  (nPT0 ) = N 0 s0 (nPT0 ) + w(nPT0 ) s Here we make use of the fact that the sub-bands are orthogonal to each other and centred at integral multiples of B / N . Hence we see that the transmitted symbols can be recovered using a simple threshold based maximum likelihood detector. No individual down conversion and filtering of the sub-bands are required. Hence, there is a significant reduction in the complexity at the receiver due to the reduced sampling rate as observed in (7) and also due to this low complexity receiver implementation as shown in (8) and (12). 2) Multi-path Cancellation: The multi-path cancellation capability of the receiver is now examined. From equations (3) and (10) we have
A ( nT0 ) = s0 ( nT0 )c0 (nT0 )
k { B0 }

hk (nT0 )e j 2 f0 knT0 +

(13)

} k { B0

sk (nT0 )ck (nT0 ) hk (nT0 )e j 2 f0 knT0

We see that the bands with same data encounter an effective smoothened channel in the face of interference from other bands with different data and their associated channels. Using (13) in (10) we have  (nPT0 ) = s

1 Tc

n + Tc 1

hav ( nT0 )    j 2 f0 knT0 0 (nT0 ) hk (nT0 )e + x n=n k {B0 } k (nT0 ) hk (nT0 )e j 2 f0 knT0 c0 ( nT0 ) + w '(nPT0 ) x k {B '0 } (14)

n=n

(9) Under the assumption of ideal interpolation and using (1) we have
1  (nPT0 ) = s Tc
n +Tc 1

N / 2 From the above expression it can be observed that it is not j 2 f knNT xk (nNTs ) hk ( nNTs )e 0 s c0 ( nT0 ) + w( nPT0 ) possible to exactly eliminate the resulting interference as the N / 2 k = multi-path components arrive randomly and not at integral

n =n

N / 2 j 2 f knT sk (nT0 )ck (nT0 ) hk (nT0 )e 0 0 c0 ( nT0 ) + w(nPT0 ) = N / 2 k  

A ( nT0 )

(10) Now, the extra phase component in (10) can be easily computed using a small known preamble symbol at the beginning of the frame.

multiples of the symbol duration PT0 . However, the orthogonal codes may be designed to minimize the interference due to multi-path effects. In order to reduce the interference from unwanted subbands, the cross-correlation of the spreading sequences should be negligible. Further to this, to reduce the self-interference of the codes due to multi-path fading, the spreading codes should have small autocorrelation side lobes in the time intervals during which multi-path components with significant power are expected. Let this interval of the channel be Q < Tc . Let

this interval of the channel be Q < Tc . The desirable code properties can be expressed as

c ( n )c ( n + ) = 1,
i j n=0

P 1

for i = j , = 0 (15)

= 0, for i = j , [1, Q 1]

Indeed, with an increasing need to support higher data rates or in higher delay spread channels, equalization becomes necessary. However in the simulation results presented, it is seen that the SUWB scheme can achieve good performance without equalization in low and medium delay spread channels specified in IEEE 802.15.4a.
TABLE 1 SIMULATION PARAMETERS

= 0, for i j , [ 0, Q 1] In practice, the correlation at non-zero lags cannot be made zero. At the most, these correlations can be minimized at each of these lags [6]. The near zero cross-correlation of the codes results in a cancellation of the interference in (14). If dominant multipaths exceed the symbol duration there will be a significant interference due to the bands { B '0 } in the presence of the fading channel. From equations (14) and (15) we have 1 n +Tc 1 Q 1  (nPT0 ) = 0 (nT0 mT0 )hav ( mT0 ) c0 ( nT0 ) + s x (16) Tc n = n m = 0
Sr. No 1 2. 3 4 5 6

Simulation Parameter UWB Bandwidth (B) Number of Sub-bands (N) Chip duration ( T0 ) Symbol Duration ( Tc ) Spreading code length (P) Modulation Type

Value/Type 500 MHz 5 10 ns 80 ns (Fig. 1 and Fig. 2) 150 ns (Fig. 3) 8 (Fig. 1 and Fig. 2) 15 (Fig. 3) BPSK

w '(nPT0 ) Since Q < Tc and evaluated (16) for n = 0 we have  (0) = s 1 Q 1 0 (mT0 )hav ( mT0 )c0 ( 0 ) + .... x Tc m = 0
m=0 Q 1

 (T x
0 0

Q 1

mT0 )hav ( mT0 )c0 (T0 ) + .....

c

1] T0 mT0 )hav ( mT0 )c0 ([Tc 1] T0 ) + w '(0) m=0 (17) Under the assumption that the synchronization point is at n = 0 , we have 1  (0) = {s0 c0 ( 0 ) hav ( 0 ) c0 ( 0 ) + s0 c0 ( T0 ) hav ( 0 ) c0 (T0 ) + ..... s Tc

 ([T x

IV. SIMULATION RESULTS Simulation results in terms of the BER vs. SNR in dB are presented in this section to demonstrate the usefulness of the SUWB method. The simulation parameters considered is given in Table 1. The channel models considered here for Fig. 1 and Fig. 2 are the IEEE 802.15.4a 2-10 GHz channel model (CM) numbers CM1, CM3, CM4 and CM7. These are medium delay spread channels with rms delay spreads 16 ns, 11 ns, 13 ns and 8 ns respectively. Walsh-Hadamard sequences were used for spreading.
10
-1

10

-2

BER

+ s0 c0 ([Tc 1] T0 ) hav ( 0 ) c0 ([Tc 1] T0 ) + .... + w '(0) (18) Making use of the good auto-correlation properties of the spreading sequences from (15) we have  (0) = s0 hav ( 0 ) + w '(0) s (19) The gain due to transmitting the same data in multiple bands reflects through hav ( 0 ) in (19). This gives us the idea that ideally the synchronization point should lock to the maximum tap of the effective smoothened channel i.e. in the above example hav ( 0 ) should be hav max ( 0 ) prior to despreading. From (18) and (19), we see that with the appropriate choice of the spreading sequences the ISI due to the channel can be reduced significantly. Thus the need for equalization can be avoided enabling a very low power receiver implementation. Indeed, the ISI associated with the chips of a symbol from the chips of another symbol is not completely cancelled. This happens at the symbol edges. However, its influence can be made negligible by an appropriate choice of the spreading factor.

10

-3

10

-4

N0=5 bands N0=4 bands N0=3 bands N0 = 2 bands

-2

4 SNR (dB)

10

Fig. 1: BER vs. SNR in dB performance of the SUWB system for the IEEE 802.15.4a CM3 with rms delay spread 11 ns for the number of bands transmitting the same data for a user ( N 0 ) ranging from 2 to 5.

These codes are not optimal according to (15) and have inferior autocorrelation properties. However since channel delay spreads considered here are very low compared to the symbol duration, the impact of self interference due to multipath is not as severe as compared to interference from unwanted sub-bands. For improving the performance in high delay spread channels sequences with good autocorrelation performance becomes necessary. For the system considered

here, the achievable data rate ranges from 12.5 Mbps to 62.5 Mbps. Figure 1 shows the results of the case in (11) with the number of sub-bands allocated to a user which transmits the same data in them ranging from N 0 =2 to N 0 =5 in UWB channel CM3. As seen the number of sub-bands transmitting the same data increases, the performance improves. This is due to the diversity gain and also due to the reduction in the effects of the interference due to multi-path and unwanted sub-bands. Figure 2 shows the BER performance of the scheme with N 0 =3 and increasing channel delay spreads from CM7, CM3, CM4 and CM1. The degradation in performance with increasing delay spreads is evident. The performance can be still improved by an appropriate choice of the spreading sequences. However, with the use of the same set of spreading codes, for delay spreads beyond 13 ns equalization becomes mandatory for improving the performance.
10
0

10

=28 ns CM5, No=3 bands rm s 10

-1

rms = 80 ns CM6, N0 =3 bands

=80 ns CM6, N0 =5 bands rm s

10

-2

BER

10

-3

10

-4

10

-5

10

-6

-6

-4

-2

4 6 SNR (dB)

10

12

14

Fig. 3: BER vs. SNR in dB performance of the SUWB system for channel models CM5 and CM6 with rms delay spreads 28 ns and 80 ns respectively using 15 length Kasami sequences.

= 13 ns , CM4 rm s = 8 ns, CM7 rm s 10

-1

= 16 ns, CM1 rm s = 11 ns, CM3 rm s

10 BER

-2

10

-3

10

-4

6 SNR (dB)

10

12

Fig. 2: BER vs. SNR in dB performance of the SUWB system for the IEEE 802.15.4a channel models CM7, CM3, CM4 and CM1 with rms delay spread 8 ns, 11 ns, 13 ns and 16 ns respectively for the number of bands transmitting the same data for a user ( N 0 ) being fixed at 3.

V. CONCLUSIONS In this work a new sub-band based UWB system is proposed. This technique provides a bandwidth efficient alternative way of communication over ultra wide band systems. SUWB can be used for medium, medium-to-high data rate networks such as personal area networks or body area networks. The complexity and achievable data rate is intermediate to IR-UWB and MB-OFDM systems. A lower sampling rate enabled by sub-banding and the proposed low complexity receiver using orthogonal spreading codes facilitate a low power implementation of the system. The BER performance evaluated over low and medium delay spread channels showed that good performance is achievable even without equalization for moderate data rates. However for higher data rates and high delay spread channels equalization is necessary. Furthermore, the performance of the system is largely governed by the spreading codes. A suitable set of spreading sequences satisfying the selection criterion is open to further exploration. REFERENCES
[1] [2] [3] [4] Moe Z. Win, and Robert A. Scholtz, Impulse Radio: How It Works, IEEE Communication Letters, vol. 2, no.2 February 2002. John R. Farserotu et.al, FM-UWB: A Low-Complexity Constant Envelope LDR UWB Approach, IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems, ISCAS 2007, May 2007, pp:757 760. Anuj Batra, Jaiganesh Balakrishnan, and Anand Dabak, Multiband-OFDM: A new approach for UWB, ISCAS May 2004, pp. 365-368. Sang-Min Han Mi-Hyun Son Yong-Hwan Kim Seong-Soo Lee , Low-Rate Chaotic UWB Transceiver System Based on IEEE 802.15.4a Microwave Conference, 2006. 36th European, Sept. 2006 A.F Molisch et al, IEEE 8021.5.4a channel model final report . [Online]. Available: http://www.ieee802.org. S.W Goloumb G. Gong Signal design with good correlation for wireless communications, cryptography and radar, Cambridge University Press, 2004.

Increasing the length of the spreading codes also improves the performance at the cost of the data rate. This is illustrated in Fig. 3 over CM5 and CM6 channels. These have rms delay spreads 28 ns and 80 ns respectively. Here the 15 length Kasami sequences are used [6]. These have good autocorrelation properties making them suitable for use in such high delay spread channels. However the inferior crosscorrelation in comparison with the Walsh Hadamard sequences affects the sub-band interference which is partly overcome by the performance gain due to the spreading factor. As a result the desirable performance in these high delay spread channels is clearly evident. Since a longer length sequence is used, the achievable data rate ranges from approximately 6 Mbps to 33 Mbps with BPSK modulation. Nevertheless, in view of the significantly improved performance, a higher modulation scheme can be used to increase the data rate and still achieve desirable performance.

[5] [6]