Maximum Free Distance Rate 1/2 Spectral Line Free Convolutional Codes for BPSK/Q-BOPPM TH-IR UWB Systems

The topic of spectral shaping is of major interest in the design of time hopping (TH) impulse radio (IR) ultra wideband (UWB) communications systems. In this letter novel rate 1/2 “spectral line free” convolutional codes for binary phase shift keying (BPSK) and quaternary biorthogonal pulse position modulated (Q-BOPPM) TH-IR UWB systems are introduced. When using these codes in BPSK/Q-BOPPM TH-IR UWB systems, the power spectral density of the signal shows no spectral lines, even when the encoder input consists of a non-uniform distributed binary data stream. The reported codes have maximum free-distance and thus offer significant forward error correction capabilities.