Due to wealth of advantages offered by short range ultra wideband (UWB) technology, such as capacity improvement, fading reduction and localization, it has gathered a considerable attention. Distinct UWB qualities also pose many system design challenges like difficulties in using digital processing, complex channel estimation and different propagation characteristics. The main objective of the thesis is to develop and evaluate efficient modulation and detection schemes for impulse radio (IR) UWB with a focus on wireless sensor networks characterized by low cost and low power consumption. The content of the thesis comprises of five parts. In Part I, a coherent RAKE and non-coherent energy detector (ED) and transmitted reference (TR) receivers are examined and their bit-error-rate (BER) performance is evaluated using channels measured in an industrial environment. In specific, selective RAKE (SRake) and partial RAKE (PRake) for both maximal ratio combining (MRC) and equal gain combining (EGC) are compared. Based on the analysis and simulation results, it is concluded the SRake with EGC is to be preferred, whereas the best complexity/performance trade-off is provided by the ED based receivers. Part II presents several signaling and detection schemes; the proposed schemes are recursive TR (R-TR), dual-doublet TR (DDTR), doublet-shift TR (DSTR) and binary pulse position modulation (BPPM)/DSTR. Analysis and simulations verify that the proposed schemes may be preferred over the conventional TR in terms of BER, energy efficiency and/or implementation complexity. Part III presents a non-coherent kurtosis detector (KD) and a fourth-order detector (FD), which can discriminate between Gaussian noise and non-Gaussian IR-UWB signals by directly estimating the fourth-order moment of the received signal. Empirical evaluations and simulations using channel measurements conducted in a corridor, an office and a laboratory environment verify that performance of the proposed FD receiver is slightly better than the ED in the low SNR region and its performance improves as the SNR increases. Part IV presents a robust weighted ED (WED) in which the weighting coefficients are estimated adaptively based on the received stochastic data. Simulation results confirm that performance of the proposed weight estimation method is close to that of a data-aided (DA) scheme. Finally, Part V focuses on a multi-user scenario and develops a weighted code-multiplexed TR (WCM-TR) receiver employing the robust adaptive weight estimation scheme. Secondly, a BPPM/CM-TR UWB system is presented to mitigate inter-frame interference (IFI) and multi-user interference (MUI) from other asynchronous users. The BPPM/CM-TR system is 3 dB energy-efficient and improves the BER performance by mitigating MUI/IFI in the high SNR region, while for the low SNR case and single-user scenario, a dual-mode BPPM/CM-TR system is suggested

This research study aims to investigate the capacity of single photons to carry information through polarization and time ordering and proposes a protocol called Beyond Pulse Position Modulation (BPPM) to improve photon-based communication reliability over longer distances with limited power. Such a protocol may be used in any communication scenario where energy efficiency is important, e.g., in satellite communication or where pulse position modulation (PPM) typically is used. The study compares various metrics such as information bits per symbol, photon, and time bin to evaluate the system’s efficiency and conducts a comparative analysis of BPPM, Pulse Position Modulation (PPM), On-Off Keying (OOK), andGeneral protocol’s effectiveness. (The simulations were conducted using the Python programming language with Visual Studio Code IDE.) / Denna forskningsstudie syftar till att undersöka informationskapaciteten hos enstaka fotoner då dessa kodats med avseende på polarisering och tidsordning. Ett nytt protokoll som kallas Beyond Pulse Position Modulation (BPPM) använder felkorrigering för att förbättra kommunikationstillförlitligheten över längre avstånd med begränsad effekt. Ett sådant protokoll kan användas i vilket kommunikationsscenario som helst där energieffektivitet är viktigt, t.ex. vid satellitkommunikation eller där pulspositionsmodulering (PPM) vanligtvis används. Studien jämför olika mätvärden som informationsbitar per symbol, per foton och per tidslucka för att utvärdera systemets effektivitet och genomför en jämförande analys av BPPM, Pulse Position Modulation (PPM), On-Off Keying (OOK) och ett protokoll med fixt antal fotoner per block avseende protokollens effektivitet. (Simuleringarna utfördes med Python-programmeringsspråket med Visual Studio Code IDE.)