Acquisition probability of multi-user UWB systems in the presence of a novel synchronization approach

Abstract: In this paper, to synchronize Ultra Wideband (UWB) systems in ad-hoc multi-user environments, we propose a new timing acquisition approach for achieving a good performance despite the difficulties to get there. Synchronization constraints are caused by the ultra-short emitted waveforms nature of UWB signals. Used in [1, 2] for single-user environments, our timing acquisition approach is based on two successive stages or floors. Extended for multi-user environments, the used algorithm is a combination between coarse synchronization based on timing with dirty templates (TDT) acquisition scheme and a new fine synchronization scheme developed in [3-6] which conduct to an improved estimate of timing offset. In this work, we develop and test this method in both data-aided (DA) and non-data-aided (NDA) modes. Simulation results and comparisons are also given to confirm performance improvement of our approach (in terms of mean square error and acquisition probability) compared to the original TDT algorithm in multi-user environments, especially in the NDA mode.