Performance of Transmitted Reference Pulse Cluster
UWB Communication Systems Using LDPC Codes
Junshan Zang, Zhonghua Liang, Jinjin Liu, Peipei Li, and Xiaojun Yang
School of Information Engineering, Chang’an University, Xi’an 710064, P. R. China
Email: zangjunshan1990@163.com, lzhxjd@hotmail.com
Abstract— Transmitted reference pulse cluster (TRPC) struc-
ture was proposed as an improved transmitted reference (TR)
signaling for low date-rate ultra-wideband (UWB) communica-
tions. In the uncoded case, TRPC outperforms the conventional
TR and non-coherent pulse position modulation (NC-PPM)
signaling schemes. Moreover, it overcomes the implementation
problem of the long delay line inherent in the conventional
TR. Therefore, TRPC is a promising candidate for noncoherent
UWB communication systems. Accordingly, coded TRPC has
also been developed employing several forward error correction
(FEC) codes, such as Reed-Solomon and convolutional codes.
Based on these previous works, in this paper low-density parity-
check (LDPC) codes are introduced to the TRPC system and two
methods are presented to construct the parity-check matrix for
LDPC codes. We evaluate the bit error rate (BER) performance
of the two corresponding LDPC codes in the IEEE 802.15.4a
channels. Results show that both the two investigated LDPC codes
obtain significant performance gains in terms of the BER over
the existing FEC codes used in the TRPC system.
I. INTRODUCTION
Transmitted reference (TR) signaling has attracted consid-
erable interest from both industry and academia because of
its simplicity and robust performance [1], [2]. Since it does
not need channel estimation and accurate synchronization, TR
in conjunction with autocorrelation receiver (AcR) is suit-
able for noncoherent ultra-wideband (UWB) communications.
However, in order to avoid the inter-pulse interference (IPI),
TR requires a large delay interval between reference and data
pulses [3]. Such an impractically stringent requirement for the
long wideband delay line results in a major challenge for the
implementation of TR systems [4], [5].
To avoid the long delay lines inherent in conventional TR
systems, transmitted reference pulse cluster (TRPC) structure
was proposed in [6]. TRPC signaling has a more compact and
uniform spacing for the reference and data pulses that repeats
a closely spaced pulse pair every 2𝑇
𝑑
seconds, where 𝑇
𝑑
is the
short separation between the reference pulse and the data pulse
within the pair. In the TRPC system, 𝑇
𝑑
can be as short as the
pulsewidth 𝑇
𝑝
and hence the implementation of the wideband
delay line is feasible. Although the compact cluster structure
will inevitably result in IPI, results reported in [6], [7] show
This work was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foun-
dation of China under Grant 61271262, 61473047 and 61201233, in part by
Shaanxi provincial natural science foundation under Grant 2015JM6310, and
in part by the Special Fund for Basic Scientific Research of Central Colleges,
Chang’an University (310824152010 and 0009-2014G1241043).
that the two benefits in terms of signal energy efficiency and
noise reduction can be achieved using TRPC structure and they
significantly exceed the penalty caused by IPI. Moreover, the
impact of the IPI can be successfully mitigated. Therefore,
TRPC still obtains better bit error rate (BER) performance
than the conventional TR and non-coherent pulse position
modulation (NC-PPM) signaling schemes.
For low-rate UWB-based applications, such as wireless sen-
sor networks (WSNs) and low-rate wireless personal area net-
works (LR-WPANs), powerful forward error correction (FEC)
is required in the physical (PHY) layer to guarantee sufficient
transmission reliability [8]. However, it is difficult for most
uncoded systems to provide a desired BER performance in the
low-to-medium signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) region due to the
limits on both power consumption and complexity. Although
several coding schemes are specified in the IEEE 802.15.4a
standard [9] such as system Reed-Solomon (RS) block code
[10], there still exist some codes with better performance like
nonsystematic convolutional code presented in [11].
In recent years, low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes
have been widely used in wireless communications due to
their excellent property of approaching Shannon limit [12].
Particularly, the implementation of the LDPC codes, that used
to be restricted because of the hardware limitations, has been
available in several UWB communications. For example, for
high-rate WPANs, LDPC codes have been used in multi-
band orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (MB-OFDM)
UWB systems [13]–[15]. Moreover, an LDPC decoder was
first implemented for the WiMedia UWB standard in [16]. An
iterative data-aided pilot-assisted receiver employing LDPC
codes was also proposed in [17] to replace impractical Rake
receivers for UWB systems.
In this paper, in order to evaluate the performance of the
LDPC codes in low-rate UWB systems, the LDPC codes are
applied to the TRPC system and accordingly, two methods are
introduced to construct effective LDPC codes for the TRPC
system. By comparing the LDPC codes with other FEC codes
specified in the IEEE 802.15.4a standard [9] and those used
in [11], we show the excellent performance of LDPC codes
in the TRPC system.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Section
II describes the system models for the coded TRPC. Section
III introduces two LDPC coding schemes with different parity-
check matrix, and the LDPC decoding procedure for the coded
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