Contactless breathing estimation using radars has been explored since the 1960s and an accurate system with the ability to continuously monitor the health of non-critical patients without obstructing their day to day lives could significantly improve their well being. The current state of the art in this area does not have the accuracy required to work in a real-world environment and many of the existing methods have been tested only under very controlled situations. Low performance of breathing estimation algorithms under different scenarios inspired us to improve breathing estimation algorithms and develop a system for automated analysis of large number of algorithms against data from the reference sensors. A novel accurate breathing rate estimation method and a system to use multiple algorithms on the same set of data in real-time and identify the best performing algorithm dynamically to report breathing rate have been proposed in this thesis. In addition, automated data-collection and processing frameworks were developed to collect a large amount of data and process them and generate reports automatically. The proposed system has been tested under multiple test-cases involving multiple subjects and the accuracy of both new and existing algorithms have been evaluated by comparing the results with reference data collected using a respiration belt. The mean absolute error rate of breathing rate estimation after conducting experiments for a total of 9 subjects was found to be 0.79 breaths per minute for the novel CEEMD based method presented in this thesis. The mean absolute error rate after applying the scoring algorithm to select the best performing algorithm is 0.78 breaths/minute.

Fully integrated Ultra-Wideband (UWB) RFIC transmitters are designed in Si-based technologies for applications such as wireless communications or sensor networks. UWB technology offers many unique features such as broad bandwidth, low power, accurate position location capabilities, etc. This research focuses on the RFIC front-end hardware design issues for proposed UWB transmitters. Two different methods of multiband frequency generation ----- using switched capacitor VCO tanks and frequency mixing with single sideband mixers ----- are explored in great detail. To generate the required UWB signals, pulse generators are designed and integrated into the transmitter chips. The first prototype UWB transmitter is designed in Freescale Semiconductor 0.18μm SiGe BiCMOS technology for operation over three 500 MHz bands at center frequencies of 4.6/6.4/8.0 GHz, and generates pulses supporting differential BPSK modulation. The transmitter output frequency is controlled by a two-bit code which sets the state of a switched capacitor tank array for coarse tuning of the VCO. While selecting between the different bands, the transmitter is capable of settling and re-transmitting in less than 0.7μs using an integrated, wide band phase-locked loop (PLL). Various issues such as mismatch/inaccuracy of the pulses and high power consumption of the prescaler were identified during the first design and were addressed in subsequent design revisions. The pulse generator is a critical part of the proposed UWB transmitter. The initial pulse generator design used CMOS delay lines and logic gates to synthesize the required pulse bandwidth; however this approach suffered from inaccurate pulse timing control due to delay time sensitivity to device modelling and process variations. Subsequently, a novel pulse generator design capable of achieving accurate timing control was implemented using digital logic and a fixed oscillator frequency to provide timing information, integrated into a modified transmitter circuit, and subsequently fabricated in Jazz Semiconductor's 0.18μm CA18 RFCMOS process. Experimental results confirm the generation of accurate one-nanosecond pulses. Finally, a new multiband UWB transmitter based on a new single sideband (SSB) resistive mixer with superior linearity and zero static power consumption was also designed and fabricated using Jazz CA13 0.13μm RF CMOS process. This design is based on a fixed frequency phase-locked VCO and generates different bands through frequency mixing. In the prototype design, two additional carrier frequencies are generated from the VCO center frequency (5 GHz) by mixing it with its output divided-by-4 (1.25 GHz). By switching the relative I/Q phases of the LO/IF inputs to this single side band mixer, either the upper side band (6.25 GHz) or lower side band (3.75 GHz) frequency is selected at the mixer output, while the other sideband is rejected. Simulation results show that the transmitter is capable of generating the desired carrier frequencies while suppressing the image component by more than 40 dB. Overall, this work has explored various aspects of UWB transmitter design and implementations in fully integrated silicon chips. The major contributions of this work include: proposed hardware architectures for pulse-based multiband UWB transmitters; implemented a fully integrated multiband UWB transmitter with embedded phase-locked switched-tank VCO capable of wide frequency tuning; demonstrated an all digital pulse generator capable of generating accurate one-nanosecond pulse trains in the presence of various mismatches; and investigated resistive SSB mixer topologies and their implementation in a multiband UWB generation architecture. / Ph. D.

In this thesis a UWB-based ranging scheme is designed, simulated, implemented and tested. This system was designed to address the problem of safely unloading cargo crates to ships in the open seas. UWB antennas are placed on the four corners of the cargo crate, providing the information needed to a ranging/positioning algorithm that estimates the orientation and distance of the ship's deck from the crate. Furthermore, the system is successfully tested in a 1/24 scale demonstration. In addition to the UWB ranging application, this thesis evaluates an already proposed modification to the traditional narrowband link budget based on the Friis transmission formula. The proposed modification replaces frequency-domain parameters with time-domain values to handle the wide bandwidth of UWB systems. The proposed approach is shown via measurements to be much more accurate than the traditional technique. / Master of Science

In recent years, ultra-wideband (UWB) communications has gained tremendous popularity in both research community and industry. The large bandwidth of UWB systems raises new wireless channel effects and consequently unique advantages as well as challenges to be dealt with, compared to conventional wireless systems. One of these advantages is the ability to resolve dense multipath components and use Rake combining at the receiver in order to significantly reduce the negative effects of fading. However, implementing a Rake receiver with a sufficiently large number of fingers to make use of this advantage is an evident challenge for most UWB devices with limited signal processing capabilities. A possible approach to overcome this problem is to move computational complexity from the receiver to the more powerful transmitter, which is the main focus of the present work. In this thesis, we propose two novel pre-equalization schemes for multiple- input single-output (MISO) direct-sequence ultra-wideband (DS-UWB) systems with pre-Rake combining and symbol-by-symbol detection. The first pre-equalization filter (PEF) scheme employs one PEF per transmit antenna, whereas in the second, simplified PEF (S-PEF) scheme all transmit antennas share the same PEF. For both schemes the optimum finite impulse response (FIR) and infinite impulse response (IIR) PEFs are calculated based on the minimum mean squared error (MMSE) criterion. We show that in contrast to previously proposed schemes for DS-UWB, both our proposed PEF schemes efficiently exploit the channel shortening properties of the pre-Rake filter. In particular, our proposed PEF schemes operate at the symbol level. We also show that under certain conditions the S-PEF scheme achieves the same performance as the more complex PEF scheme. Finally, we demonstrate that a single-input multiple-output (SIMO) DS-UWB system with post-Rake combining and MMSE post-equalization is the dual system to the considered MISO DS–UWB system with pre-Rake combining and MMSE pre-equalization. This uplink-downlink duality can be exploited for efficient calculation of the PEFs and for complexity reduction. Our simulation results show that the proposed PEF schemes achieve significant performance gains over pre-Rake combining without equalization even if only short PEFs are employed, and this is the case even for long UWB channel impulse responses.

In recent years, ultra-wideband (UWB) radars are gaining popularity in the radar field mainly inindustrial and commercial areas. The UWB radar has the potential of dramatically improving thecontrol and surveillance of industrial processes in confined areas.The report provides an introduction to radar systems and detail working principle of M-sequenceUWB radar and methodology of how detection of targets is carried out. First two chapters of thereport describes the working of radar systems and M-sequence radar whereas in the later part ofthe report, different detection algorithms are discussed which has been implemented in thepresent radar simulations. In conventional radar the main detection algorithm is matched filteringwhere the transmitted signal is correlated with the received signal. Whereas UWB signal is nonsinusoidalthat is vulnerable to change in its shape during entire radar operation. This is thereason, the traditional signal processing methods like matched filtering or correlation process arenot advisable for UWB signals. Therefore, a different detection scheme known as Inter-periodcorrelation process (IPCP) has been studied.IPCP technique had been implemented and a comparison was made with the conventional targetdetection algorithm. On the basis of comparison made in this project, it has been observed thatthe conventional target detection methods are not effective in case of M-sequence UWB radar.The simulation results shows that by implementing IPCP method, performance close to 8-bitADC can be achievable with 1-bit comparator, also with IPCP implementation system resolutioncan be enhance effectively.Main focus was to analyze how close the system can detect two targets, therefore in all themeasurements i.e. practical and simulated measurements, only two targets were used.

In recent years, ultra-wideband (UWB) communications has gained tremendous popularity in both research community and industry. The large bandwidth of UWB systems raises new wireless channel effects and consequently unique advantages as well as challenges to be dealt with, compared to conventional wireless systems. One of these advantages is the ability to resolve dense multipath components and use Rake combining at the receiver in order to significantly reduce the negative effects of fading. However, implementing a Rake receiver with a sufficiently large number of fingers to make use of this advantage is an evident challenge for most UWB devices with limited signal processing capabilities. A possible approach to overcome this problem is to move computational complexity from the receiver to the more powerful transmitter, which is the main focus of the present work. In this thesis, we propose two novel pre-equalization schemes for multiple- input single-output (MISO) direct-sequence ultra-wideband (DS-UWB) systems with pre-Rake combining and symbol-by-symbol detection. The first pre-equalization filter (PEF) scheme employs one PEF per transmit antenna, whereas in the second, simplified PEF (S-PEF) scheme all transmit antennas share the same PEF. For both schemes the optimum finite impulse response (FIR) and infinite impulse response (IIR) PEFs are calculated based on the minimum mean squared error (MMSE) criterion. We show that in contrast to previously proposed schemes for DS-UWB, both our proposed PEF schemes efficiently exploit the channel shortening properties of the pre-Rake filter. In particular, our proposed PEF schemes operate at the symbol level. We also show that under certain conditions the S-PEF scheme achieves the same performance as the more complex PEF scheme. Finally, we demonstrate that a single-input multiple-output (SIMO) DS-UWB system with post-Rake combining and MMSE post-equalization is the dual system to the considered MISO DS–UWB system with pre-Rake combining and MMSE pre-equalization. This uplink-downlink duality can be exploited for efficient calculation of the PEFs and for complexity reduction. Our simulation results show that the proposed PEF schemes achieve significant performance gains over pre-Rake combining without equalization even if only short PEFs are employed, and this is the case even for long UWB channel impulse responses.

Face à une demande sans cesse croissante de haut débit et d’adaptabilité des systèmes existants, qui à son tour se traduit par l’encombrement du spectre, le développement de nouvelles solutions dans le domaine des communications sans fil devient nécessaire afin de répondre aux exigences des applications émergentes. Parmi les innovations récentes dans ce domaine, l’ultra large bande (UWB) a suscité un vif intérêt. La radio impulsionnelle UWB (IR-UWB), qui est une solution intéressante pour réaliser des systèmes UWB, est caractérisée par la transmission des impulsions de très courte durée, occupant une largeur de bande allant jusqu’à 7,5 GHz, avec une densité spectrale de puissance extrêmement faible. Cette largeur de bande importante permet de réaliser plusieurs fonctionnalités intéressantes, telles que l’implémentation à faible complexité et à coût réduit, la possibilité de se superposer aux systèmes à bande étroite, la diversité spatiale et la localisation très précise de l’ordre centimétrique, en raison de la résolution temporelle très fine.Dans cette thèse, nous examinons certains éléments clés dans la réalisation d'un système IR-UWB intelligent. Nous avons tout d’abord proposé le concept de radio UWB cognitive à partir des similarités existantes entre l'IR-UWB et la radio cognitive. Dans sa définition la plus simple, un tel système est conscient de son environnement et s'y adapte intelligemment. Ainsi, nous avons tout d’abord focalisé notre recherché sur l’analyse de la disponibilité des ressources spectrales (spectrum sensing) et la conception d’une forme d’onde UWB adaptative, considérées comme deux étapes importantes dans la réalisation d'une radio cognitive UWB. Les algorithmes de spectrum sensing devraient fonctionner avec un minimum de connaissances a priori et détecter rapidement les utilisateurs primaires. Nous avons donc développé de tels algorithmes utilisant des résultats récents sur la théorie des matrices aléatoires, qui sont capables de fournir de bonnes performances, avec un petit nombre d'échantillons. Ensuite, nous avons proposé une méthode de conception de la forme d'onde UWB, vue comme une superposition de fonctions B-splines, dont les coefficients de pondération sont optimisés par des algorithmes génétiques. Il en résulte une forme d'onde UWB qui est spectralement efficace et peut s’adapter pour intégrer les contraintes liées à la radio cognitive. Dans la 2ème partie de cette thèse, nous nous sommes attaqués à deux autres problématiques importantes pour le fonctionnement des systèmes UWB, à savoir la synchronisation et l’estimation du canal UWB, qui est très dense en trajets multiples. Ainsi, nous avons proposé plusieurs algorithmes de synchronisation, de faible complexité et sans séquence d’apprentissage, pour les modulations BPSK et PSM, en exploitant l'orthogonalité des formes d'onde UWB ou la cyclostationnarité inhérente à la signalisation IR-UWB. Enfin, nous avons travaillé sur l'estimation du canal UWB, qui est un élément critique pour les récepteurs Rake cohérents. Ainsi, nous avons proposé une méthode d’estimation du canal basée sur une combinaison de deux approches complémentaires, le maximum de vraisemblance et la décomposition en sous-espaces orthogonaux,d’améliorer globalement les performances. / Faced with an ever increasing demand of high data-rates and improved adaptability among existing systems, which inturn is resulting in spectrum scarcity, the development of new radio solutions becomes mandatory in order to answer the requirements of these emergent applications. Among the recent innovations in the field of wireless communications,ultra wideband (UWB) has generated significant interest. Impulse based UWB (IR-UWB) is one attractive way of realizing UWB systems, which is characterized by the transmission of sub nanoseconds UWB pulses, occupying a band width up to 7.5 GHz with extremely low power density. This large band width results in several captivating features such as low-complexity low-cost transceiver, ability to overlay existing narrowband systems, ample multipath diversity, and precise ranging at centimeter level due to extremely fine temporal resolution.In this PhD dissertation, we investigate some of the key elements in the realization of an intelligent time-hopping based IR-UWB system. Due to striking resemblance of IR-UWB inherent features with cognitive radio (CR) requirements, acognitive UWB based system is first studied. A CR in its simplest form can be described as a radio, which is aware ofits surroundings and adapts intelligently. As sensing the environment for the availability of resources and then consequently adapting radio’s internal parameters to exploit them opportunistically constitute the major blocks of any CR, we first focus on robust spectrum sensing algorithms and the design of adaptive UWB waveforms for realizing a cognitive UWB radio. The spectrum sensing module needs to function with minimum a-priori knowledge available about the operating characteristics and detect the primary users as quickly as possible. Keeping this in mind, we develop several spectrum sensing algorithms invoking recent results on the random matrix theory, which can provide efficient performance with a few number of samples. Next, we design the UWB waveform using a linear combination of Bsp lines with weight coefficients being optimized by genetic algorithms. This results in a UWB waveform that is spectrally efficient and at the same time adaptable to incorporate the cognitive radio requirements. In the 2nd part of this thesis, some research challenges related to signal processing in UWB systems, namely synchronization and dense multipath channel estimation are addressed. Several low-complexity non-data-aided (NDA) synchronization algorithms are proposed for BPSK and PSM modulations, exploiting either the orthogonality of UWB waveforms or theinherent cyclostationarity of IR-UWB signaling. Finally, we look into the channel estimation problem in UWB, whichis very demanding due to particular nature of UWB channels and at the same time very critical for the coherent Rake receivers. A method based on a joint maximum-likelihood (ML) and orthogonal subspace (OS) approaches is proposed which exhibits improved performance than both of these methods individually.

In recent years, ultra-wideband (UWB) communications has gained tremendous popularity in both research community and industry. The large bandwidth of UWB systems raises new wireless channel effects and consequently unique advantages as well as challenges to be dealt with, compared to conventional wireless systems. One of these advantages is the ability to resolve dense multipath components and use Rake combining at the receiver in order to significantly reduce the negative effects of fading. However, implementing a Rake receiver with a sufficiently large number of fingers to make use of this advantage is an evident challenge for most UWB devices with limited signal processing capabilities. A possible approach to overcome this problem is to move computational complexity from the receiver to the more powerful transmitter, which is the main focus of the present work. In this thesis, we propose two novel pre-equalization schemes for multiple- input single-output (MISO) direct-sequence ultra-wideband (DS-UWB) systems with pre-Rake combining and symbol-by-symbol detection. The first pre-equalization filter (PEF) scheme employs one PEF per transmit antenna, whereas in the second, simplified PEF (S-PEF) scheme all transmit antennas share the same PEF. For both schemes the optimum finite impulse response (FIR) and infinite impulse response (IIR) PEFs are calculated based on the minimum mean squared error (MMSE) criterion. We show that in contrast to previously proposed schemes for DS-UWB, both our proposed PEF schemes efficiently exploit the channel shortening properties of the pre-Rake filter. In particular, our proposed PEF schemes operate at the symbol level. We also show that under certain conditions the S-PEF scheme achieves the same performance as the more complex PEF scheme. Finally, we demonstrate that a single-input multiple-output (SIMO) DS-UWB system with post-Rake combining and MMSE post-equalization is the dual system to the considered MISO DS–UWB system with pre-Rake combining and MMSE pre-equalization. This uplink-downlink duality can be exploited for efficient calculation of the PEFs and for complexity reduction. Our simulation results show that the proposed PEF schemes achieve significant performance gains over pre-Rake combining without equalization even if only short PEFs are employed, and this is the case even for long UWB channel impulse responses. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Electrical and Computer Engineering, Department of / Graduate

En esta tesis doctoral se plantea la mejora de la capacidad de transmisión en las redes HDR-WPAN ( redes WPAN con elevada tasa binaria) empleando el estándar MB-OFDM (OFDM sobre múltiples bandas) en canales UWB con modulación adaptativa realizando una adaptación discreta de la tasa de bits transmitidos por subportadora. La tesis comienza con un análisis en el dominio del tiempo y de la frecuencia de los dos modelos de canal UWB propuestos en IEEE: IEEE 802.15.3a y 802.15.4a. El objetivo consiste en determinar la distribución estadística que mejor se aproxima a la amplitud de cada una de las subportadoras, para posteriormente definir la métrica a emplear en la evaluación del estado y dinámica del canal UWB. En la modulación adaptativa se requiere que el transmisor se adapte a la variabilidad del canal. El análisis se puede realizar de dos formas: - Asumiendo adaptación perfecta (estimación ideal), lo que implica que el transmisor siempre conoce la dinámica y estructura del canal. - Considerando un error (estimación imperfecta del canal) en la adaptación debido a la incertidumbre en el conocimiento del canal. El método de estimación del canal UWB empleado en la tesis se fundamenta en el conocimiento del coeficiente de correlación en potencia entre las subportadoras de datos y la subportadora piloto. A partir de la información sobre el estado del canal, u una vez definida la métrica que permite su evaluación, se calculan las prestaciones de la modulación adaptativa. Esta evaluación se realiza a través de expresiones cerradas para la capacidad media, la probabilidad de error de bit media y la probabilidad de bloqueo, así como la obtención de la distribución y estadísticos del error de estimación en el caso de estimación imperfecta del canal. Por otro lado, a partir de la distribución estadística de la amplitud de cada una de las subportadoras en frecuencia del canal UWB, se obtienen resultados respecto a la variación de potencia del canal en función del ancho de banda . / Llano Ramírez, G. (2010). Modelado en frecuencia del canal UWB y su aplicación en el análisis de técnicas de modulación adaptativa en sistemas MB-OFDM UWB para redes WPAN [Tesis doctoral]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/8429

Ultra Wideband (UWB) communication systems occupy large bandwidths with very low power spectral densities. This feature makes UWB channels highly rich in multipaths. To exploit the temporal diversity, a UWB receiver usually incorporates Rake reception. Each multipath in the channel carries just a fraction of the signal energy. This phenomenon dictates a Rake receiver with a large number of fingers to achieve good energy capture and output signal to noise ratio (SNR). Eventually, the Rake structure becomes very complex from analysis and design perspectives and incurs higher manufacturing cost. The first contribution of this thesis is to propose channel shortening or time domain equalization as a technique to reduce the complexity of the UWB Rake receiver. It is analyzed that most of the existing channel shortening equalizer (CSE) designs are either system specific or optimize a parameter not critical or even available in UWB systems. The CSE designs which are more generic and use commonly critical cost functions may perform poorly due to particular UWB channel profiles and related statistical properties. Consequently, the main contribution of the thesis is to propose several CSE designs to address the specific needs of UWB systems. These CSE designs not only exploit some general but also some UWB specific features to perform the task more efficiently. The comparative analysis of the proposed CSEs, some existing designs and the conventional Rake structures leads towards the conclusion. It is finally shown that the use of CSE at the receiver front end greatly simplifies the Rake structure and the associated signal processing.