Performance evaluation on correlation detection and energy detection for ultra wideband-impulse radio communication with multi-pulse position modulation scheme in implant body area networks

Ultra wideband-impulse radio (UWB-IR) transmission, which can provide high data rate for real-time transmission and low-power consumption in transceivers, is one of promising transmission technologies in implant body area networks (BANs). Some studies on UWB-IR propagation characteristics in implant BANs have reported that UWB-IR signals suffer from large attenuation in human body channels. It is therefore necessary to clarify the actual performance of UWB-IR modulation and demodulation methods in implant BANs. In this study, the authors focus on experimental evaluation of the correlation detection and energy detection for UWB-IR transmission with multi-pulse position modulation (MPPM). For this purpose, the authors develop a UWB-IR communication system with MPPM scheme, and experimentally evaluate the transmission performance of the developed systems with the two detection methods. In addition to the experimental evaluation, the authors also theoretically analyse the bit-error rate (BER) performance of the correlation detection and energy detection methods by using Gaussian approximation. From the experimental results, the developed system has achieved a BER of 10 -2 at the propagation loss of 75 dB with a data rate of 2 Mbps in the correlation detection. This result shows the feasibility of reliable UWB-IR communication in actual implant BANs.