Enhancement of RAKE receivers for ultra-wideband reception

Ultra-wideband (UWB) is seen as a potential candidate for wireless communication and other applications as it possesses many attractive features. The multipath profile of UWB consists of resolvable components. However, unlike narrow-band pulses, the received components in different directions are fundamentally different from the transmitted signal. Traditionally, RAKE receivers work by correlating the received signal with the source signal. Although this proved sufficient in the narrowband transmission, it is not the case for the wideband. Some researchers showed that significant improvement in captured energy (CE) in the wideband reception could be achieved by correlating the received signal with multiple received templates. The author re-visits the issue to assess the amount of improvement resulting from multi-template reception of UWB signals and its relation to the number and type of templates. Moreover, the author studies the cost of the multi-template reception. Finally, a threshold-based capturing technique that reduces the cost of reception while maintaining most of the attainable gain in CE is proposed.