Role Of Antennas And The Propagation Channel On The Performance Of An Ultra Wide Band (Uwb) Communication System

Abstract

The objectives of this dissertation are to experimentally and numerically quantify the effect of antennas and the propagation channel on the performance of an Ultra Wide Band (UWB) receiver. This work has led to the following new results: (1) the variation in the time duration of the impulse response of the oval dipole in the vertical plane is within 5% up to an angle theta = 60° off the broadside direction (theta = 90°); at larger angles a factor of six elongation in the time duration of the impulse response along the antenna axis (theta = 0°) is observed, (2) for an axial ratio of 0.5, the oval dipole has a Voltage Standing Wave Ratio (VSWR) of 2:1 (~11% reflection coefficient) in a 3.1 GHz bandwidth with a lower cut off frequency of 2.8 GHz; for an axial ratio of 2.0 this scales to 0.5 GHz bandwidth with a lower cut off frequency of 1.75 GHz, (3) a new theoretical model has been developed for UWB pulse propagation over the ground which takes into account the geometrical properties of the propagation channel (such as the heights of the transmitter (h1) and the receiver (h2) over the ground) and the nature of the radiated UWB pulse (such as pulse duration (taup) and cycle time (tauc)), (4) an improvement in bit error rate by up to a factor of 100 can be achieved for a matched filter receiver by careful orientation of the transmitting and the receiving oval dipole antennas used in the measurements presented in this dissertation.